I ^ 1 ^ ^. >^, 311.7 BOOK 2 1 1.7.B6 13G c. 1 BLATCHFORD # GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR 3 ^153 00DbS31fl D GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR ROBERT BLATCHFORD EDITOR OF THE CLARION, LONDOK CHICAGO CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 1914 JOHN F. HIGGINS PRINTCR AND BINDER 80 376-382 MONROE STREET CHICAGO. ILLINOIS TO MY SON ROBERT CORRI BLATCHFORD THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFACE INFIDEL! I put the word in capitals, because it is my new name, and I want to get used to it. Infidel I The name has been bestowed on me by several Chris- tian gentlemen as a reproach, but to my ears it has a quaint and not unpleasing sound. Infidel ! " The notorious Infidel editor of the Clarion " is the form used by one True Believer. The words re- curred to my mind suddenly, while I was taking my fa- vorite black pipe for a walk along " the pleasant Strand," and I felt a smile glimmer within as I repeated them. Which is worse, to be a Demagogue or an Infidel? I am both. For while many professed Christians contrive to serve both God and Mammon, the depravity of my na- ture seems to forbid my serving either. It was a mild day in mid August, not cold for the time of year. I had been laid up for a few days, and my back was unpropitious, and I was tired. But I felt very happy, for so bad a man, since the sunshine was clear and genial, and my pipe went as easily as a dream. ^ Besides, one's fellow-creatures are so amusing: espe- cially in the Strand. I had seen a proud and gorgeously upholstered lady lolling languidly in a motor car, and looking extremely pleased with herself — not without reason; and I had met two successful men of great pres- ence, who reminded me somehow of '' Porkin and Snob " ; and I had noticed a droll little bundle of a baby, in a 7 8 PREFACE fawn colored woolen suit, with a belt slipped almost to her knees, and sweet round eyes as purple as pansies, who was hunting a rolling apple amongst " the wild mob's million feet"; and I had seen a worried-looking matron frantically waving her umbrella to the driver of an omnibus, endanger the silk hat of Porkin, and disturb the complacency of Snob ; and I felt glad. It was at that moment that there popped into my head the full style and title I had earned. '' Notorious Infidel editor of the Clarion! '^ These be brave words, indeed. For a moment they almost flattered me into the belief that I had become a member of the higher criminal classes : a bold bad man, like Guy Fawkes, or Kruger, or R. B. Cunninghame-Graham. " You ought," I said to myself, " to dress the part. You ought to have an S.D.F. sombrero, a slow wise Fabian smile, and the mysterious trousers of a Soho con- spirator." But at the instant I caught a sight of my counterfeit presentment in a shop window, and veiled my haughty crest. That a notorious Infidel ! Behold a dumpy, com- fortable British paterfamilias in a light flannel suit and a faded sun hat. No; it will not do. Not a bit like Mephisto: much more like the Miller of the Dee. Indeed, I am not an irreligious man, really; I am rather a religious man ; and this is not an irreligious, but rather a religious book. Such thoughts should make men humble. After all, may not even John Burns be human ; may not Mr. Cham- berlain himself have a heart that can feel for another? Gentle reader, that was a wise as well as a charitable man who taught us there is honor among thieves; al- though, having never been a member of Parliament him- self, he must have spoken from hearsay. PREFACE 9 " For all that, Robert, you're a notorious Infidel." I paused — just opposite the TivoH — and gazed moodily up and down the Strand. As I have remarked elsewhere, I like the Strand. It is a very human place. But I own that the Strand lacks dignity and beauty, and that amongst its varied odors the odor of sanctity is scarce perceptible. There are no trees in the Strand. The thoroughfare should be wider. The architecture is, for the most part, banal. For a chief street in a Christian capital, the Strand is not eloquent of high national ideals. There are derelict churches in the Strand, and dingy blatant taverns, and strident signs and hoardings; and there are slums hard by. There are thieves in the Strand, and prowling vagrants, and gaunt hawkers, and touts, and gamblers, and loitering failures, with tragic eyes and wilted garments ; and pros- titutes plying for hire. And east and west, and north and south of the Strand, there is London. Is there a man amongst all London's millions brave enough to tell the naked truth about the vice and crime, the misery and meanness, the hypocrisies and shames of the great, rich, heathen city? Were such a man to arise amongst us and voice the awful truth, what would his reception be ? How would he fare at the hands of the Press, and the Public — and the Church ? As London is, so is England. This is a Christian country. What would Christ think of Park Lane, and the slums, and the hooligans? What would He think of the Stock Exchange, and the Music Hall, and the race- course? What would He think of our national Ideals? What would He think of the House of Peers, and the Bench of Bishops, and the Yellow Press ? Pausing again, over against Exeter Hall, I mentally BO PREFACE apostrophize the Christian British people. '' Ladies and Gentlemen," I say, "you are Christian in name, but I discern little of Christ in your ideals, your institutions, or your daily lives. You are a mercenary, self-indulgent, frivolous, boastful, blood-guilty mob of heathen. I like you very much, but that is what you are. And it is you — you who call men " Infidels." You ridiculous crea- tures, what do you mean by it? If to praise Christ in words, and deny Him in deeds, be Christianity, then London is a Christian city, and England is a Christian nation. For it is very evident that our common English ideals are anti-Christian, and that our commercial, foreign, and social affairs are run on anti-Christian lines. Renan says, in his Life of Jesus, that " were Jesus to return amongst us He would recognize as His disciples, not those who imagine they can compress Him into a few catechismal phrases, but those who labor to carry on His work." My Christian friends, I am a Socialist, and as such believe in, and work for, universal freedom, and universal brotherhood, and universal peace. And you are Christians, and I am an ** Infidel." Well, be it even so. I am an " Infidel," and I now ask leave to tell you why. FOREWORDS It is impossible for me to present the whole of my case in the space at my command ; I can only give an outline. Neither can I do it as well as it ought to be done, but only as well as I am able. To make up for my shortcomings, and to fortify my case with fuller evidence, I must refer the reader to books written by men better equipped for the work than I. To do justice to so vast a theme would need a large book, where I can only spare a short chapter, and each large book should be written by a specialist. For the reader's own satisfaction, then, and for the sake of justice to my cause, I shall venture to suggest a list of books whose contents will atone for all my failures and omissions. And I am justified, I think, in saying that no reader who has not read the books I recommend, or others of like scope and value, can fairly claim to sit on the jury to try this case. And of these books I shall, first of all, heartily recom- mend the series of cheap sixpenny reprints now pub- lished by the Rationalist Press Association, Johnson's Court, London, E.G. R.P.A. Reprints Huxley's Lectures and Essays. Tyndall's Lectures and Essays. Laing's Human Origins. Laing's Modern Science and Modern Thought, Qodd's Pioneers of Evolution. Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma. II (la FOREWORDS Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe. Grant Allen's Evolution of the Idea of God. Cotter Morrison's Service of Man, Herbert Spencer's Education. Some Apologists have, I am sorry to say, attempted to disparage those excellent books by alluding to them as " Sixpenny Science " and " Cheap Science." The same method of attack will not be available against most of the books in my next list: The Golden Bough, Frazer. Macmillan, 36s. The Legend of Perseus, Hartland. D. Nutt, 25s. Christianity and Mythology, Robertson. Watts, 8so Pagan Christs, Robertson. Watts, 8s. Supernatural Religion, Cassel. Watts, 6s. The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade. Kegan Paul, 6s. Mutual Aid, Kropotkin. Heinemann, 7s. 6d. The Story of Creation, Godd. Longmans, 3s. 6d. Buddha and Buddhism, Lillie. Clark, 3s. 6d. Shall We Understand the Bible? Williams. Black, is. What is Religion? Tolstoy. Free Age Press, 6d. What I Believe, Tolstoy. Free Age Press, 6d. The Life of Christ, Renan. Scott, is. 6d. I also recommend Herbert Spencer's Principles of So- ciology, and Lecky's History of European Morals. Of pamphlets there are hundreds. Readers will get full information from Watts & Co., 17 Johnson's Court, London, E.C. I can warmly recommend The Miracles of Christian Belief and The Claims of Christianity, by Charles Watts, and Christianity and Progress, a penny pamphlet, by G. W. Foote (The Freethought Publishing Company). I should also like to mention An Easy Outline of Evo- lution, by Dennis Hird (Watts & Co., 2s. 6d.). This book will be of great help to those who want to scrape acquaintance with the theory of evolution. Finally, let me ask the general reader to put aside all prejudice, and give both sides a fair hearing. Most of FOREWORDS 13 the books I have mentioned above are of more actual value to the public of to-day than many standard works which hold world-wide reputations. No man should regard the subject of religion as de- cided for him until he has read The Golden Bough. The Golden Bough is one of those books that unmake history. CONTENTS PAGE Preface vii Forewords xi The Sin of Unbelief 17 One Reason 24 What I Can and Cannot Believe . , 25 The Old Testament — Is the Bible the Word of God? 35 The Evolution of the Bible 51 The Universe 60 Jehovah 69 Bible Heroes 81 The Book of Books 92 Our Heavenly Father 99 Prayer and Praise 106 The New Testament — The Resurrection 113 Gospel Witnesses 119 The Time Spirit 132 Have the Documents been Tampered with? . . . .135 Christianity before Christ 139 Other Evidences 149 The Christian Religion — What is Christianity? 155 Determinism — Can Men Sin against God? 165 i6 CONTENTS Christian Apologies — page Christian Apologies 187 Christianity and Civilization 193 Christianity and Ethics 197 The Success of Christianity 205 The Prophecies 209 The Universality of Religious Belief ....... 211 Is Christianity the Only Hope? 213 Spiritual Discernment 218 Some other Apologies , . . 226 Counsels of Despair 229 Conclusion — The Parting of the Ways 237 , GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR THE SIN OF UNBELIEF Huxley quotes with satirical gusto Dr. Wace's declara- tion as to the word '' Infidel." Said Dr. Wace : " The word infidel, perhaps, carries an unpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. It is, and it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ." Be it pleasant or unpleasant to be an unbeliever, one thing is quite clear: religious people intend the word Infidel to carry " an unpleasant significance " when they apply to it one. It is in their minds a term of reproach. Because they think it is wicked to deny what they beheve. To call a man Infidel, then, is tacitly to accuse him of a kind of moral turpitude. But a little while ago, to be an Infidel was to be so- cially taboo. But a little while earlier, to be an Infidel was to be persecuted. But a little earlier still, to be an Infidel was to be an outlaw, subject to the penalty of death. Now, it is evident that to visit the penalty of social ostracism or public contumely upon all who reject the popular religion is to erect an arbitrary barrier against intellectual and spiritual advance, and to put a protective tariff upon orthodoxy to the disadvantage of science and free thought. The root of the idea that it is wicked to reject the i8 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR popular religion — a wickedness of which Christ and Socrates and Buddha are all represented to have been guilty — thrives in the belief that the Scriptures are the actual words of God, and that to deny the truth of the Scriptures is to deny and to affront God. But the difficulty of the unbeliever lies in the fact that he cannot believe the Scriptures to be the actual words of God. The Infidel, therefore, is not denying God's words, nor disobeying God's commands : he is denying the words and disobeying the commands of men. No man who knew that there was a good and wise God would be so foolish as to deny that God. No man would reject the words of God if he knew that God spoke those words. But the doctrine of the divine origin of the Scriptures rests upon the authority of the Church; and the differ- ence between the Infidel and the Christian is that the Infidel rejects and the Christian accepts the authority of the Church. Belief and unbelief are not matters of moral excel- lence or depravity : they are questions of evidence. The Christian believes the Scriptures because they are the words of God. But he believes they are the words of God because some other man has told him so. Let him probe the matter to the bottom, and he will inevitably find that his authority is human, and not, as he supposes, divine. For you, my Christian friend, have never seen God. You have never heard God's voice. You have received from God no message in spoken or written words. You have no direct divine warrant for the divine authorship of the Scriptures. The authority on which your belief THE SIN OF UNBELIEF ig in the divine revelation rests consists entirely of the Scriptures themselves and the statements of the Church. But the Church is composed solely of human beings, and the Scriptures v^ere v^ritten and translated and printed solely by human beings. You believe that the Ten Commandments v^ere dic- tated to Moses by God. But God has not told you so. You only believe the statement of the unknown author of the Pentateuch that God told him so. You do not know v^ho Moses was. You do not know who wrote the Pentateuch. You do not know who edited and trans- lated the Scriptures. Clearly, then, you accept the Scriptures upon the au- thority of unknown men, and upon no other demonstrable authority whatever. Clearly, then, to doubt the doctrine of the divine rev- elation of the Scriptures is not to doubt the word of God, but to doubt the words of men. But the Christian seems to suspect the Infidel of reject- ing the Christian religion out of sheer wantonness, or from some base or sinister motive. The fact being, that the Infidel can only believe those things which his own reason tells him are true. He opposes the popular religion because his reason tells him it is not true, and because his reason tells him insistently that a religion that is not true is not good, but bad. In thus obeying the dictates of his own reason, and in thus advocating what to him seems good and true, the Infidel is acting honorably, and is as well within his right as any Pope or Prelate. That base or mercenary motives should be laid to the charge of the Infidel seems to me as absurd as that base or mercenary motives should be laid to the charge of 20 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR the Socialist. The answer to such Hbels stares us in the face. Socialism and Infidelity are not popular, nor profitable, nor respectable. If you wish to lose caste, to miss preferment, to en- danger your chances of gaining money and repute, turn Infidel and turn SociaHst. Briefly, Infidelity does not pay. It is " not a pleasant thing to be an Infidel." The Christian thinks it his duty to " make it an un- pleasant thing " to deny the " true faith." He thinks it his duty to protect God, and to revenge His outraged name upon the Infidel and the Heretic. The Jews thought the same. The Mohammedan thinks the same. How many cruel and sanguinary wars has that pre- sumptuous belief inspired? How many persecutions, outrages, martyrdoms, and massacres have been perpe- trated by fanatics who have been " jealous for the Lord"? As I write these lines Christians are murdering Jews in Russia, and Mohammedans are murdering Christians in Macedonia to the glory of God. Is God so weak that He needs foolish men's defense? Is He so feeble that He cannot judge nor avenge? My Christian friend, so jealous for the Lord, did you ever regard your hatred of " Heretics " and " Infidels " in the light of history? The history of civilization is the history of successions of brave " Heretics " and " Infidels," who have denied false dogmas or brought new truths to light. The righteous men, the " true believers " of the day, have cursed these heroes and reviled them, have tor- tured, scourged, or murdered them. And the children of the " True Believers " have adopted the heresies as THE SIN OF UNBELIEF 21 true, and have glorified the dead Heretics, and then turned round to curse or murder the new Heretic who fain would lead them a little further toward the light. Copernicus, who first solved the mystery of the Solar System, was excommunicated for heresy. But Chris- tians acknowledge now that the earth goes round the sun, and the name of Copernicus is honored. Bruno, who first declared the stars to be suns, and " led forth Arcturus and his host," was burnt at the stake for heresy. Galileo, the father of telescopic astronomy, was threat- ened with death for denying the errors of the Church, was put in prison and tortured as a heretic. Christians acknowledge now that Galileo spoke the truth, and his name is honored. As it has been demonstrated in those cases, it has been demonstrated in thousands of other cases, that the Her- etics have been right, and the True Believers have been wrong. Step by step the Church has retreated. Time after time the Church has come to accept the truths, for telling which She persecuted, or murdered, her teachers. But still the True Believers hate the Heretic, and regard it as a righteous act to make it " unpleasant " to be an " Infidel." After taking a hundred steps away from old dogmas and towards the truth, the True Believer shudders at the request to take one more. After two thousand years of foolish and wicked persecution of good men, the True Believer remains faithful to the tradition that it " ought to be an unpleasant thing " to expose the errors of the Church. The Christians used to declare that all the millions 22 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR of men and women outside the Christian Church would " burn forever in burning Hell." They do not like to be reminded of that folly now. They used to declare that every unbaptized baby would go to Hell and burn forever in fire and brimstone. They do not like to be reminded of that folly now. They used to believe in witchcraft, and they burned millions — yes, millions — of innocent women as witches. They do not like to hear of witchcraft now. They used to believe the legends of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. They call them allegories now. They used to believe that the world was made in six days. Now they talk mildly about " geological periods." They used to denounce Darwinism as impious and absurd. They have since " cheerfully accepted " the theory of evolution. They used to believe that the sun revolved round the earth, and that he who thought otherwise was an Infidel, and would be damned in the " bottomless pit." But now ! Now they declare that Christ was God, and His mother a virgin ; that three persons are one person ; that those who trust in Jesus shall go to Heaven, and those who do not trust in Jesus will be " lost." And if any one denies these statements, they call him Infidel. Are you not aware, friend Christian, that what was Infidelity is now orthodoxy? It is even so. Heresies for which men used to be burned alive are now openly accepted by the Church. There is not a divine Hving who would not have been burned at the stake three cen- turies ago for expressing the beliefs he now holds. Yet you call a man Infidel for being a century in advance of you. History has taught you nothing. It has not occurred to you that as the " infidelity " of yesterday has THE SIN OF UNBELIEF 23 become the enlightened religion of to-day, it is possible that the '' infidelity "of to-day may become the enlight- ened religion of to-morrow. Civilization is built up of the " heresies " of men who tht>ught freely and spoke bravely. Those men were called " Infidels " when they were aUve. But now they are called the benefactors of the world. Infidel! The name has been borne, good Christian, by some of the noblest of our race. I take it from you with a smile. I am an easiful old pagan, and I am not angry with you at all — you funny little champion of the Most High. ONE REASON I HAVE been asked why I have opposed Christianity. I have several reasons, v^hich shall appear in due course. At present I offer one. I oppose Christianity because it is not true. No honest man will ask for any other reason. But it may be asked why I say that Christianity is not true; and that is a very proper question, which I shall do my best to answer. WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE I HOPE it will not be supposed that I have any personal animus against Christians or Christian ministers, al- though I am hostile to the Church. Many ministers and many Christian laymen I have known are admirable men. Some I know personally are as able and as good as any men I have met; but I speak of the Churches, not of individuals. I have known Catholic priests and sisters who were worthy and charming, and there are many such; but I do not like the Catholic Church. I have known Tories and Liberals who were real good fellows, and clever fellows, and there are many such; but I do not like the Liberal and Tory parties. I have known clergymen of the Church of England who were real live men, and real English gentlemen, and there are many such; but I do not like the Church. I was not always an Agnostic, or a Rationalist, or an " Infidel," or whatever Christians may choose to call me. I was not perverted by an Infidel book. I had not read one when I wavered first in my allegiance to the orthodoxies. I was set doubting by a religious book written to prove the " Verity of Christ's Resurrection from the Dead." But as a child I was thoughtful, and asked myself questions, as many children do, which the Churches would find it hard to answer to-day. I have not ceased to believe what I was taught as a child because I have grown wicked. I have ceased to 26 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR believe it because, after twenty years' hard thinking, I cannot believe it. I cannot believe, then, that the Christian religion is true. I cannot believe that the Bible is the word of God. For the word of God would be above criticism and be- yond disproof, and the Bible is not above criticism nor beyond disproof. I cannot believe that any religion has been revealed to Man by God. Because a revealed religion would be perfect, but no known religion is perfect; and because history and science show us that known religions have not been revealed, but have been evolved from other religions. There is no important feature of the Chris- tian religion which can be called original. All the rites, mysteries, and doctrines of Christianity have been bor- rowed from older faiths. I cannot believe that Jehovah, the God of the Bible, is the Creator of the known universe. The Bible God, Jehovah, is a man-made God, evolved from the idol of an obscure and savage tribe. The Bible shows us this quite plainly. I cannot believe that the Bible and the Testament are historically true. I regard most of the events they re- cord as fables, and most of their characters as myths. I cannot believe in the existence of Jesus Christ, nor Buddha, nor Moses. I believe that these are ideal char- acters constructed from still more ancient legends and traditions. I cannot believe that the Bible version of the relations of man and God is correct. For that version, and all other religious versions known to me, represents man as sinning against or forsaking God, and God as punish- ing or pardoning man. WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE 27 But if God made man, then God is responsible for all man's acts and thoughts, and therefore man cannot sin against God. And if man could not sin against God, but could only act as God ordained that he should act, then it is against reason to suppose that God could be angry with man, or could punish man, or see any offense for which to pardon man. I cannot believe that man has ever forsaken God. Because history shows that man has from the earliest times been eagerly and pitifully seeking God, and has served and praised and sacrificed to God with a zeal akin to madness. But God has made no sign. I cannot believe that man was at the first created "perfect," and that he " fell." (How could the perfect fall?) I believe the theory of evolution, which shows not a fall but a gradual rise. I cannot believe that God is a loving " Heavenly Father," taking a tender interest in mankind. Because He has never interfered to prevent the horrible cruelties and injustices of man to man, and because he has per- mitted evil to rule the world. I cannot reconcile the idea of a tender Heavenly Father with the known hor- rors of war, slavery, pestilence, and insanity. I cannot discern the hand of a loving Father in the slums, in the earthquake, in the cyclone. I cannot understand the in- difference of a loving Father to the law of prey, nor to the terrors and tortures of leprosy, cancer, cholera, and consumption. I cannot believe that God is a personal God, who inter- venes in human affairs. I cannot see in science, nor in experience, nor in history any signs of such a God, nor of such intervention. I cannot believe that God hears and answers prayer, S28 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR because the universe is governed by laws, and there is no reason to suppose that those laws are ever interfered with. Besides, an all-wise God knows what to do better than man can tell Him, and a just God would act justly without requiring to be reminded of His duty by one of His creatures. I cannot believe that miracles ever could or ever did happen. Because the universe is governed by laws, and there is no credible instance on record of those laws being suspended. I cannot believe that God " created " man, as man now is, by word of mouth and in a moment. I accept the theory of evolution, which teaches that man was slowly evolved by natural process from lower forms of life, and that this evolution took millions of years. I cannot believe that Jesus Christ was God, nor that He was the Son of God. There is no solid evidence for the miracle of the Incarnation, and I see no reason for the Incarnation. I cannot believe that Christ died to save man from Hell, nor that He died to save man from sin. Because I do not believe God would condemn the human race to eternal torment for being no better than He had made them, and because I do not see that the death of Christ has saved man from sin. I cannot believe that God would think it necessary to come on earth as a man, and die on the Cross. Because if that was to atone for man's sin, it was needless, as God could have forgiven man without Himself suffering. I cannot believe that God would send His son to die on the Cross. Because He could have forgiven man without subjecting His son to pain. I cannot accept any doctrine of atonement. Because to forgive the guilty because the innocent had suffered WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE 29 would be unjust and unreasonable, and to forgive the guilty because a third person begged for his pardon would be unjust. I cannot believe that a good God would allow sin to enter the world. Because He would hate sin and would have power to destroy or to forbid it. I cannot believe that a good God would create or tolerate a Devil, nor that he would allow the Devil to tempt man. I cannot believe the story of the virgin birth of Christ. Because for a man to be born of a virgin would be a miracle, and I cannot believe in miracles. I cannot believe the story of Christ's resurrection from the dead. Because that would be a miracle, and because there is no solid evidence that it occurred. I cannot believe that faith in the Godhood of Christ is necessary to virtue or to happiness. Because I know that some holding such faith are neither happy nor virtuous, and that some are happy and virtuous who do not hold that faith. The differences between the religious and the scientific theories, or, as I should put it, between superstition and rationalism, are clearly marked and irreconcilable. The supernaturalist stands by " creation " : the ration- alist stands by " evolution." It is impossible to reduce these opposite ideas to a common denominator. The creation theory alleges that the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and man, and the animals were " created " by God, instantaneously, by word of mouth, out of noth- ing. The evolution theory alleges that they were evolved, slowly, by natural processes out of previously existing matter. The supernaturalist alleges that religion was revealed to 30 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR man by God, and that the form of this revelation is a sa- cred book. The rationahst alleges that religion was evolved by slow degrees and by human minds, and that all existing forms of religion and all existing " sacred books," instead of being " revelations," are evolutions from religious ideas and forms and legends of prehistoric times. It is impos- sible to reduce these opposite theories to a common de- nominator. The Christians, the Hindoos, the Parsees, the Bud- dhists, and the Mohammedans have each their " Holy Bible " or " sacred book." Each religion claims that its own Bible is the direct revelation of God, and is the only true Bible teaching the only true faith. Each religion regards all the other religions as spurious. The supernaturalists believe in miracles, and each sect claims that the miracles related in its own inspired sacred book prove the truth of that book and of the faith taught therein. No religion accepts the truth of any other religion's miracles. The Hindoo, the Buddhist, the Mohammedan, the Parsee, the Christian each believes that his miracles are the only real miracles. The Protestant denies the miracles of the Roman Catholic. The rationalist denies all miracles alike. " Miracles never happen." The Christian Bible is full of miracles. The Christian Religion is founded on miracles. No rationalist believes in miracles. Therefore no ra- tionalist can accept the Christian Religion. If you discard " Creation " and accept evolution ; if you discard " revelation " and accept evolution ; if you dis- card miracles and accept natural law, there is nothing WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT BELIEVE 31 left of the Christian Religion but the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. And when one sees that all religions and all ethics, even the oldest known, have, like all language and all science and all philosophy and all existing species of animals and plants, been slowly evolved from lower and ruder forms ; and when one learns that there have been many Christs, and that the evidence of the life of Jesus is very slight, and that all the acts and words of Jesus had been antici- pated by other teachers long before the Christian era, then it is borne in upon one's mind that the historic basis of Christianity is very frail. And when one realizes that the Christian theology, besides being borrowed from older religions, is manifestly opposed to reason and to facts, then one reaches a state of mind which entitles the ortho- dox Christian to call one an " Infidel," and to make it " unpleasant " for one to the glory of God. That is the position in which I stand at present, and it is partly to vindicate that position, and to protest against those who feel as I feel being subjected to various kinds of " unpleasantness," that I undertake this Apology. THE OLD TESTAMENT * IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? The question of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is one of great importance. If the Bible is a divine revelation, if it contains the actual word of God, and nothing but the word of God, then it is folly to doubt any statement it contains. If the Bible is merely the work of men, if it contains only the words of men, then, like all other human work, the Bible is fallible, and must submit to criticism and ex- amination, as all fallible human work must. The Christian Religion stands or falls by the truth of the Bible. If the Bible is the word of God the Bible must be true, and the Christian Religion must be true. But, as I said before, the claim for the divine origin of the Bible has not been made by God, but by men. We have therefore no means of testing the Bible's title to divine revelation other than by criticism and examina- tion of the Bible itself. If the Bible is the word of God — the all-wise and per- fect God — the Bible will be perfect. If the Bible is not perfect it cannot be the word of a God who is perfect. The Bible is not perfect. Historically, scientifically, and ethically the Bible is imperfect. If the Bible is the word of God it will present to us the perfect God as He is, and every act of His it records will be perfection. But the Bible does not show us a perfect God, but a very imperfect God, and such of His acts as the Bible records are imperfect. I say, then, with strong conviction, that I do not believe 35 36 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR the Bible to be the word of God ; that I do not believe it to be inspired of God ; that I do not believe it to contain any divine revelation of God to man. Why ? Let us consider the claim that the Bible is the word of God. Let us, first of all, consider it from the common- sense point of view, as ordinary men of the world, trying to get at the truth and the reason of a thing. What would one naturally expect in a revelation by God to man? 1. We should expect God to reveal truths of which mankind were ignorant. 2. We should expect God to make no errors of fact in His revelation. 3. We should expect God to make His revelation so clear and so definite that it could be neither misunder- stood nor misrepresented. 4. We should expect God to insure that His revelation should reach all men ; and should reach all men directly and quickly. 5. We should expect God^s revelation of the relations existing between Himself and man to be true. 6. We should expect the ethical code in God's revela- tion to be complete, and final, and perfect. The divine ethics should at least be above human criticism and be- yond human amendment. To what extent does the Bible revelation fulfill the above natural expectations? 1. Does the Bible reveal any new moral truths? I cannot speak very positively, but I think there is very little moral truth in the Bible which has not been, or will not be, traced back to more ancient times and religions. 2. Does the Bible revelation contain no errors of fact? I claim that it contains many errors of fact, and the Higher Criticism supports the claim ; as we shall see. IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? 37 3. Is the Bible revelation so clear and explicit that no difference of opinion as to its meaning is possible? No. It is not. No one living can claim anything of the kind. '4. Has God's revelation, as given in the Bible, reached all men? No. After thousands of years it is not yet known to one-half the human race. 5. Is God's revelation of the relations between man and God true? I claim that it is not true. For the word of God makes it appear that man was created by God in His own image, and that man sinned against God. Whereas man, being only what God made him, and having only the powers God gave him, could not sin against God, any more than a steam-engine can sin against the engineer who designed and built it. 6. Is the ethical code of the Bible complete, and final, and perfect? No. The ethical code of the Bible gradually develops and improves. Had it been divine it would have been perfect from the first. It is because it is human that it develops. As the prophets and the poets of the Jews grew wiser, and gentler, and more enlightened, so the revelation of God grew wiser and gentler with them. Now, God would know from the beginning; but men would have to learn. Therefore the Bible writings would appear to be human, and not divine. Let us look over these points again, and make the mat- ter still clearer and more simple. If the children of an earthly father had wandered away and forgotten him, and were, for lack of guidance, living evil lives ; and if the earthly father wished his children to know that they were his children, wished them to know 38 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR what he had done for them, what they owed to him, what penalty they might fear, or reward they might ask from him ; if he washed them to Hve cleanly and justly, and to love him, and at last come home to him — what would that earthly father do? He would send his message to all his children, instead of sending it to one, and trusting him to repeat it cor- rectly to the others. He would try to so word his mes- sage as that all his children might understand it. He would send his children the very best rules of life he knew. He would take great pains to avoid error in matters of fact. If, after the message w^as sent, his children quarreled and fought about its meaning, their earthly father would not sit silent and allow them to hate and slay each other, because of a misconception ; but would send at once, and make his meaning plain to all. And if an earthly father would act thus wisely and thus kindly, " how much more your Father which is in Heaven " ? But the Bible revelation was not given to all the people of the earth. It was given to a handful of Jews. It was not so explicit as to make disagreement impossible. It is thousands of years since the revelation of God began, and yet to-day it is not known to hundreds of millions of human beings, and amongst those whom it has reached there is endless bitter disagreement as to its meaning. Now, what is the use of a revelation which does not reveal more than is known, which does not reveal truth only, which does not reach half those who need it, which cannot be understood by those it does reach? But you will regard me as a prejudiced witness. I shall therefore, in my effort to prove the Bible fallible, quote almost wholly from Christian critics. IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? 39 And I take the opportunity to here recommend very strongly Shall We Understand the Bible, by the Rev. T. Rhondda WilHams; Adam & Charles Black, is. net. There are two chief theories as to the inspiration of the Bible. One is the old theory that the Bible is the actual word of God, and nothing but the word of God, directly revealed by Gk)d to Moses and the prophets. The other is the new theory : that the Bible is the work of many men whom God had inspired to speak or write the truth. The old theory is well described by Dr. Washington Gladden in the following passage : They imagine that the Bible must have originated in a manner purely miraculous; and, though they know very little about its origin, they conceive of it as a book that was written in heaven in the English tongue, divided there into chapters and verses, with headlines and reference marks, printed in small pica, bound in calf, and sent down by angels in its present form. The newer idea of the inspiration of the Bible is also well expressed by Dr. Gladden ; thus : Revelation, we shall be able to understand, is not the dicta- tion by God of words to men that they may be written down in books : it is rather the disclosure of the truth and love of God to men in the processes of history, in the development of the moral order of the world. It is the light that lighteth every man, shining in the paths that lead to righteousness and life. There is a moral leadership of God in history; revelation is the record of that leadership. It is by no means confined to words; its most impressive disclosures are in the field of action. " Thus did the Lord," as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more perfect formula of revelation than " Thus saith the Lord." It is in that great historical movement of which the Bible is the record that we find the revelation of God to men. The old theory of Bible inspiration was, as I have said, the theory that the Bible was the actual and pure word of God, and was true in every circumstance and detail. Now, if an almighty and all-wise God had spoken or written every word of the Bible, then that book would, of 90 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR course, be wholly and unshakably true in its every state- ment. But if the Bible was written by men, some of them more or less inspired, then it would not, in all probability, be wholly perfect. The more inspiration its writers had from God, the more perfect it would be. The less inspiration its writers had from God, the less perfect it would be. Wholly perfect, it might be attributed to a perfect being. Partly perfect, it might be the work of less per- fect beings. Less perfect, it would have to be put down to less perfect beings. Containing any fault or error, it could not be the actual word of God, and the more errors and faults it contained, the less inspiration of God would be granted to its au- thors. I will quote again from Dr. Gladden: What I desire to show is, that the work of putting the Bible into its present form was not done in heaven, but on earth ; that it was not done by angels, but by men; that it was not done all at once, but a little at a time, the work of preparing and per- fecting it extending over several centuries, and ernploying the labors of many men in different lands and long-divided genera- tions. I now turn to Dr. Aked. On page 25 of his book, Changing Creeds, he says: Ignorance has claimed the Bible for its own. Bigotry has made the Bible its battleground. Its phrases have become the shibboleth of pietistic sectarians. Its authority has been evoked in support of the foulest crimes committed by the vilest men; and its very existence has been made a pretext for theories which shut out God from His own world. In our day Bible- worship has become, with many very good but very unthoughtful people, a disease. So much for the attitude of the various schools of re- ligious thought towards the Bible. IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? 41 Now, in the opinion of these Christian teachers, is the Bible perfect or imperfect? Dr. Aked gives his opinion with characteristic candor and energy : Fjor observe the position: men are told that the Bible is the infallible revelation of God to man, and that its statements con- cerning God and man are to be unhesitatingly accepted as state- ments made upon the authority of God. They turn to its pages, and they find historical errors, arithmetical mistakes, scientific blunders (or, rather, blunders most unscientific), inconsistencies, and manifold contradictions; and, what is far worse, they find that the most horrible crimes are committed by men who calmly plead in justification of their terrible misdeeds the imperturbable " God said." The heart and conscience of man indignantly re- bel against the representations of the Most High given in some parts of the Bible. What happens? Why, such men declare — are now declaring, and will in constantly increasing numbers, and with constantly increasing force and boldness declare — that they can have nothing to do with a book whose errors a child can discover, and whose revelation of God partakes at times of blasphemy against man. I need hardly say that I agree with every word of the above. If any one asked me what evidence exists in sup- port of the claims that the Bible is the word of Gk)d, or that it was in any real sense of the words " divinely in- spired," I should answer, without the least hesitation, that there does not exist a scrap of evidence of any kind in support of such a claim. Let us give a little consideration to the origin of the Bible. The first five books of the Bible, called the Penta- teuch, were said to be written by Moses. Moses was not, and could not, have been the author of those books. There is, indeed, no reliable evidence to prove that Moses ever existed. Whether he was a fictitious hero, or a solar myth, or what he was, no man knows. Neither does there appear to be any certainty that the biblical books attributed to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest were really written by those kings or prophets, or even in their age. 42 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR And after these books, or many of them, had been writ- ten, they were entirely lost, and are said to have been re- produced by Ezra. Add to these facts that the original Hebrew had no vowels, that many of the sacred books were written with- out vowels, and that the vowels were added long after ; and remember that, as Dr. Aked says, the oldest Hebrew Bible in existence belongs to the tenth century after Christ; and it will begin to appear that the claim for biblical infallibility is utterly absurd. But I must not offer these statements on my own au- thority. Let us return to Dr. Gladden. On page ii of IVho Wrote the Bible? I find the following: The first of these holy books of the Jews was, then, The Law, contained in the first five books of our Bible, known among us as the Pentateuch, and called by the Jews sometimes simply " The Law," and sometimes " The Law of Moses." This was supposed to be the oldest portion of their Scriptures, and was by them regarded as much more sacred and authoritative than any other portion. To Moses, they said, God spake face to face; to the other holy men much less distinctly. Consequently, their appeal is most often to the law of Moses. The sacredness of the five books of " The Law," then, rests upon the belief that they were written by Moses, who had spoken face to face with God. So that if Moses did not write those books, their sa- credness is a myth. Now, on page 42, Dr. Gladden says : 1. The Pentateuch could never have been written by any one man, inspired or otherwise. 2. It is a composite work, in which many hands have been engaged. The production of it extends over many centuries. 3. It contains writings which are as old as the time of Moses, and some that are much older. It is impossible to tell how much of it came from the hand of Moses ; but there are consid- erable portions of it which, although they may have been some- what modified by later editors, are substantially as he left them. On page 45 Dr. Gladden, again speaking of the Penta- teuch, says: IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? 43 But the story of Genesis goes back to a remote antiquity. The last event related in that book occurred four hundred years be- fore Moses was born; it was as distant from him as the dis- covery of America by Columbus is from us; and other portions of the narrative, such as the stories of the Flood and the Cre- ation, stretch back into the shadows of the age which precedes history. Neither Moses nor any one living in his day could have given us these reports from his own knowledge. Whoever wrote this must have obtained his materials in one of three ways : 1. They might have been given to him by divine revelation from God. 2. He might have gathered them up from oral tradition, from stories, folklore, transmitted from mouth to mouth, and so pre- served from generation to generation. 3. He might have found them in written documents existing at the time of his writing. As many of the laws and incidents in the books of Moses were known to the Chaldeans, the " direct revela- tion of God " theory is not plausible. On this point Dr. Gladden's opinion supports mine. He says, on page 61 : That such is the fact with respect to the structure of these ancient writings is now beyond question. And our theory of inspiration must be adjusted to this fact. Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspira- tion, can be made to fit the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascer- tained results of criticism, would compel us to take such posi- tions as the following : the original authors of each one of the writings which enter into the composite structure were infallibly inspired; every one who made any changes in any one of these fundamental writings was infallibly inspired; every compiler who put together two or more of these writings was infallibly inspired, both as to his selections and omissions, and as to any connecting or explanatory words which he might himself write; every redactor was infallibly inspired to correct and supplement, and omit that which was the product of previous infallible in- spirations. Or, perhaps, it might seem more convenient to at- tack the claim of a plenary inspiration to the last redactor of all; but then we should probably have selected of all others the one least able to bear the weight of such a claim. Think of making the claim for a plenary inspiration of the Pentateuch in its present form on the ground of the infallibility of that one '44 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR of the scribes who gave it its last touches some time subsequent to the death of Ezra." Remember that Dr. Gladden declares, on page 5, that he shall state no conclusions as to the history of the sacred writings which will not be accepted by conserva- tive critics. On page 54 Dr. Gladden quotes the following from Dr. Perowne : The first composition of the Pentateuch as a whole could not have taken place till after the Israelites entered Canaan. The whole work did not finally assume its present shape till its revision was undertaken by Ezra after the return from the Babylonish captivity. On page 25 Dr. Gladden himself speaks as follows : The common argument by which Christ is made a witness to the authenticity and infallible authority of the Old Testament runs as follows : Christ quotes Moses as the author of this legislation; there- fore Moses must have written the whole Pentateuch. Moses was an inspired prophet; therefore all the teaching of the Penta- teuch must be infallible. The facts are that Jesus nowhere testifies that Moses wrote the whole of the Pentateuch; and that he nowhere guarantees the infallibility either of Moses or of the book. On the con- trary, he set aside as inadequate or morally defective, certain laws which in this book are ascribed to Moses. So much for the authorship and the inspiration of the first five books of the Bible. As to the authorship of other books of the Bible, Dr. Gladden says of Judges and Samuel, that we do not know the authors nor the dates. Of Kings he says : " The name of the author is con- cealed from us." The origin and correctness of the Prophecies and Psalms, he tells us, are problematical. Of the Books of Esther and Daniel, Dr. Gladden says : " That they are founded on fact I do not doubt ; but it is, perhaps, safer to regard them both rather as historical fictions than as veritable histories." IS THE BIBEE THE WORD OF GOD? 45 Of Daniel, Dean Farrar wrote : The immense majority of scholars of name and acknowledged competence in England and Europe have now been led to form an irresistible conclusion that the jBook of Daniel was not writ- ten, "and could not have been written, in its present form, by the prophet Daniel, B. C. 534, but that it can only have been written, as we now have it, in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, about B. C. 164, and that the object of the pious and patriotic author was to inspirit his desponding countrymen by splendid specimens of that lofty moral fiction which was always common amongst the Jews after the Exile, and was known as "The Haggadah." So clearly is this proven to most critics, that they willingly suffer the attempted refutations of their views to sink to the ground under the weight of their own inadequacy.^ I return now to Dr. Aked, from whose book I quote the following: Dr. Clifford has declared that there is not a man who has given a day's attention to the question who holds the complete freedom of the Bible from inaccuracy. He has added that "it is become more and more impossible to affirm the inerrancy of the Bible." Dr. Lyman Abbott says that "an infallible book is an impossible conception, and to-day no one really believes that our present Bible is such a book." Compare those opinions with the following extract from this first article in The Bible and the Child: The change of view respecting the Bible, which has marked the advancing knowledge and more earnest studies of this gen- eration, is only the culmination of the discovery that there were different documents in the Book of Genesis — a discovery first published by the physician, Jean Astruc, in 1753. There are three widely divergent ways of dealing with these results of profound study, each of which is almost equally dangerous to the faith of the rising generation. I. Parents and teachers may go on inculcating dogmas about the Bible and methods of dealing with it which have long be- come impossible to those who have really tried to follow the manifold discoveries of modern inquiry with perfectly open and unbiased minds. There are a certain number of persons who, when their minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclu- sions, are simply incapable of grasping new truths. They be- come obstructives, and not infrequently bigoted obstructives. As convinced as the Pope of their own personal inf allibility, their 1 The Bible and the Child. '4.6 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR attitude towards those who see that the old views are no longer tenable is an attitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the odium theologicum. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediaeval Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have thus been petrified by- custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hope- less to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think that they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results ar- rived at by the lifelong inquiries of the ablest students, while they have not given a day's serious or impartial study to them. They fancy that even the ignorant, if only they be what is called " orthodox," are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful, and often incomparably more able than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious, if only they shout " Infidel " with sufficient loudness. Those are not the words of an " Infidel." They are the words of the late Dean Farrar. To quote again from Dr. Gladden : Evidently neither the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have com- monly given to that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. The Bible is not inspired. The fact is, that no " sa- cred " book is inspired. All " sacred " books are the work of human minds. All ideas of God are human ideas. All religions are made by man. When the old-fashioned Christian said the Bible was an inspired book, he meant that God put the words and the facts directly into the mind of the prophet. That meant that God told Moses about the creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, and the Ten Commandments. Many modern Christians, amongst whom I place the Rev. Ambrose Pope, of Bakewell, believe that God gave IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? 47 Moses (and all the other prophets) a special genius, and a special desire to convey religious information to other men. And Mr. Pope suggests that man was so ignorant, so childlike, or so weak in those days that it was necessary to disguise plain facts in misleading symbols. But the man, Moses or another, who wrote the Book of Genesis was a man of literary genius. He was no child, no weakling. If God had said to him : " I made the world out of the fiery nebula, and I made the sea to bring forth the staple of life, and I caused all living things to develop from that seed or staple of life, and I drew man out from the brutes ; and the time was six hundred millions of years." If God had said that to Moses, do you think Moses would not have understood ? Now, let me show you what the Christian asks us to believe. He asks us to believe that the God who was the first cause of creation, and knew everything, inspired man, in the childhood of the world, with a fabulous and inaccurate theory of the origin of man and the earth, and that since that day the same God has gradually changed or added to the inspiration, until He inspired Laplace, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Darwin to contradict the teachings of the previous fifty thousand years. He asks us to believe that God muddled men's minds with a mysterious series of revelations cloaked in fable and alle- gory; that He allowed them to stumble and to blunder, and to quarrel over these " revelations " ; that He allowed them to persecute, and slay, and torture each other on account of divergent readings of His " revelations " for ages and ages ; and that He is still looking on while a number of bewildered and antagonistic religions fight each other to achieve the survival of the fittest. Is that a reasonable theory? Is it the kind of theory a reason- 48 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR able man can accept? Is it consonant with common sense. Contrast that with our theory. We say that early man, having no knowledge of science, and more imagination than reason, would be alarmed and puzzled by the phe- nomena of nature. He would be afraid of the dark, he would be afraid of the thunder, he would wonder at the moon, at the stars, at fire, at the ocean. He would fear what he did not understand, and he would bow down and pay homage to what he feared. Then, by degrees, he would personify the stars, and the sun, and the thunder, and the fire. He would make gods of these things. He would make gods of the dead. He would make gods of heroes. And he would do what all savage races do, what all children do : he would make legends, or fables, or fairy tales, out of his hopes, his fears, and his guesses. Does not that sound reasonable? Does not history teach us that it is true? Do we not know that religion was so born and nursed ? There is no such thing known to men as an original religion. All religions are made up of the fables and the imaginations of tribes long since extinct. Religion is an evolution, not a revelation. It has been invented, altered, and built up, and pulled down, and reconstructed, time after time. It is a conglomeration and an adapta- tion, as language is. And the Christian religion is no more an orignal religion than English is an original tongue. We have Sanscrit, Latin, Greek, French, Saxon. Norman words in our language ; and we have Aryan, Semitic, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and all manner of ancient foreign fables, myths, and rites in our Christian religion. We say that Genesis was a poetic presentation of a IS THE BIBLE THE WORD OF GOD? 49 fabulous story pieced together from many traditions of many tribes, and recording with great Hterary power the ideas of a people whose scientific knowledge was very incomplete. Now, I ask you which of these theories is the most reasonable; which is the most scientific; which agrees most closely with the facts of philology and of history of which we are in possession? Why twist the self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was the work of unscientific men of strong imag- ination, into a far-fetched and unsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just as easy and just as reasonable to take the Morte d' Arthur and try to prove that it contained a veiled revelation of God's relations to man. And let me ask one or two questions as to this matter of the revelation of the Holy Bible. Is God all-power- ful, or is He not? If He is all-powerful, why did He make man so imperfect? Could He not have created him at once a wise and good creature ? Even when man was ignorant and savage, could not an all-powerful God have devised some means of revealing Himself so as to be understood? If God really wished to reveal Himself to man, why did He reveal Himself only to one or two ob- scure tribes, and leave the rest of mankind in darkness? Those poor savages were full of credulity, full of ter- ror, full of wonder, full of the desire to worship. They worshiped the sun and the moon; they worshiped ghosts and demons; they worshiped tyrants, and pre- tenders, and heroes, dead and alive. Do you believe that if God had come down on earth, with a cohort of shining angels, and had said, " Behold, I am the only God," these savages would not have left all baser gods, and wor- shiped Him? Why, these men, and all the thousands 50 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR of generations of their children, have been looking for God since first they learned to look at sea and sky. They are looking for Him now. They have fought countless bloody wars, and have committed countless horrible atrocities in their zeal for Him. And you ask us to be- lieve that His grand revelation of Himself is bound up in a volume of fables and errors collected thousands of years ago by superstitious priests and prophets of Pales- tine, and Egypt, and Assyria. We cannot believe such a statement. No man can be- lieve it who tests it by his reason in the same way in which he would test any modern problem. If the leaders of religion brought the same vigor and subtlety of mind to bear upon religion which they bring to bear upon any criticism of religion, if they weighed the Bible as they have weighed astronomy and evolution, the Christian re- ligion would not last a year. If my reader has not studied this matter, let him read the books I have recommended, and then sit down and consider the Bible revelation and story with the same fearless honesty and clear common sense with which he would consider the Bibles of the Mohammedan, or Bud- dhist, or Hindoo, and then ask himself the question : " Is the Bible a holy and inspired book, and the word of God to man, or is it an incongruous and contradictory collec- tion of tribal traditions and ancient fables, written by men of genius and imagination?'* THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE We now reach the second stage in our examination, which is the claim that no rehgion known to man can be truly said to be original. All religions, the Christian re- ligion included, are adaptations or variants of older re- ligions. Religions are not revealed: they are evolved. If a religion were revealed by God, that religion would be perfect in whole and in part, and would be as perfect at the first moment of its revelation as after ten thou- sand years of practice. There has never been a religion which fulfills those conditions. According to Bible chronology, Adam was created some six thousand years ago. Science teaches that man existed during the glacial epoch, which was at least fifty thou- sand years before the Christian era. Here I recommend the study of Laing's Human Origins, Parsons' Our Sun God, Sayce's Ancient Empires of the East, and Frazer's Golden Bough. In his visitation charge at Blackburn, in July, 1889, the Bishop of Manchester spoke as follows : Now, if these dates are accepted, to what age of the world shall we assign that Accadian civilization and literature which so long preceded Sargo I and the statutes of Sirgullah? I can best answer you in the words of the great Assyriologist, F. Hommel : "If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B. C, in possession of the fully developed Shumiro- Accadian culture adopted by them — a culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted like a cutting from Shumir, then the latter must be far, far older still, and have existed in its com- pleted form in the fifth thousand B. C, an age to which I un- hesitatingly ascribe the South Babylonian incantations." . . . Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past? 5.1 52 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR A culture which was complete one thousand years be- fore Adam must have needed many thousands of years to develop. It would be a modest guess that Accadian culture implied a growth of at least ten thousand years. Of course, it may be said that the above biblical error is only an error of time, and has no bearing on the al- leged evolution of the Bible. Well, an error of a million, or of ten thousand, years is a serious thing in a divine revelation; but, as we shall see, it has a bearing on evo- lution. Because it appears that in that ancient Accadian civilization lie the seeds of many Bible laws and legends. Here I quote from Our Sun God, by Mr. J. D. Par- sons: To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with the remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations, that the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge, and the confusion of tongues, were the common property of the Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus under Moses. . . . Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created, is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Man- chester. For in an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these pregnant words : "Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that the Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, three thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed in Chaldaea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the Church have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories." The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity. Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his Ancient Empires of the East, speaks as follows : THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE 53 With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called saros. Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their sins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitch it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every species. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, and lastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the dove and the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when the raven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark. He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountain of Nizir, "the mountain of the world," whereon the Accadians believed the heavens to rest — where, too, they placed the habitations of their gods, and the cradle of their own race. Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little south of Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Row- andiz itself. On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wine by sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu," appeared in the heaven, in covenant that the world should never again be destroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and his wife, like the biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions of the blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people made their way westward to Sippara. Here they disin- terred the books buried by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, and re-established themselves in their old country under the government first of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile, other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here, under the leadership of the giant Etana, called Titan by the Greek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect a tower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so win for themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros. . . . But the tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Bel frustrated their purpose by con- founding their language, and scattering them on the mound. These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously borrowed by the Jews during their Baby- lonian captivity. Professor Sayce, in his Ancient Empires of the East, speaking of the Accadian king, Sargon L, says : Legends naturally gathered round the name of this Baby- lonian Solomon. Not only was he entitled "the deviser of law, the deviser of prosperity," but it was told of him how his father had died while he was still unborn, how his mother had fled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses, to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and how he was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer," who brought him 54 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR up as his own son, until the time came when, under the pro- tection of Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat on the throne of his forefathers. From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel ; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, and very likely the Com- mandments; and is it not possible that the legendary Moses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancient mythical figure? Compare Sayce with the following " Notes on the Moses Myth," from Christianity and Mythology, by J. M. Robertson : Notes on the Moses Myth I have been challenged for saying that the story of Moses and the floating basket is a variant of the myth of Horos and the floating island (Herod, ii. 156). But this seems sufficiently proved by the fact that in the reign of Rameses II, according to the monuments, there was a place in Middle Egypt which bore the name I-en-Moshe, "" the island of^ Moses." That is the primary meaning. Brugsch, who proclaims the fact {Egypt under the Pharaohs, ii, 117), suggests that it can also mean "the river bank of Moses." It is very obvious, however, that the Egyptians would not have named a place by a real incident in the life of a successful enemy, as Moses is represented in Exodus. Name and story are alike mythological and pre-He- braic, though possibly Semitic. The Assyrian myth of Sar- gon, which is, indeed, very close to the Hebrew, may be the oldest form of all; but the very fact that the Hebrews located their story in Egypt shows that they knew it to have a home there in some fashion. The name Moses, whether it mean " the water-child" (so Deutsch) or "the hero" (Sayce, Hib. Led. p. 46), was in all likelihood an epithet of Horos. The basket, in the latter form, was doubtless an adaptation from the ritual of the basket-born God-Child, as was the birth story of Jesus. In Diodorus Siculus (i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horos dead "on the water," and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clue to the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet other Egyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptians had a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as did Hermes), and having had to fly for it to Egypt, w^here he gave laws and learning to the Egyptians. Yet, curiously enough, this myth probably means that the Sun-God, who has in the other story escaped the "massacre of the inno- THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE 55 cents" (the morning stars), now plays the slayer on his own account, since the slaying of many-eyed Argus probably means the extinction of the stars by the morning sun (cp. iimeric-David, Introduction, end). Another "Hermes" was son of Nilus, and his name was sacred (Cicero, De Nat. Deor. Hi, 22, cp. 16). The story of the floating child, finally, becomes part of the lore of Greece. In the myth of Apollo, the Babe-God and his sister Artemis are secured in float-islands. It is impossible to form a just estimate of the Bible without some knowledge of ancient history and compara- tive mythology. It would be impossible for me to go deeply into these matters in this small book, but I will quote a few significant passages, just to show the value of such historical evidence. Here, to begin with, are some passages from Mr. Grant Allen's Evolution of the Idea of God: The Origin of Gods Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so admirably, in his Principles of Sociology, the progress of development from the Ghost to the God that I do not propose in this chapter to attempt much more than a brief recapitulation of his main propositions, which, how- ever, I shall supplement with fresh examples, and adapt at the same time to the conception of three successive stages in human ideas about the Life of the Dead, as set forth in the preceding argument. In the earliest stage of all — the stage where the actual bodies of the dead are preserved — Gods as such are for the most part unknown : it is the corpses of friends and ancestors that are worshiped and reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the corpse of a Tahitian chief, that it was placed in a sitting posture under a protecting shed ; " a small altar was erected be- fore it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were daily pre- sented by the relatives, or the priest appointed to attend the body." (This point about the priest is of essential importance.) The Central Americans, again, as Mr. Spencer notes, performed similar rites before bodies dried by artificial heat. The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship the dried mum- mies of their fathers and husbands. A little higher in the scale, we get the developed mummy-worship of Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of greater gods, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship and offerings are paid to them. Often, however, as already noted, it is not the whole body, 56 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR but the head alone, that is specially kept and worshiped. Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people of Buru : "The dead are buried in the forest in some secluded spot, marked by a merang, or grave-pole, over which at certain intervals the relatives place tobacco, cigarettes, and various offerings. When the body is de- composed, the son or nearest relative disinters the head, wraps a new cloth about it, and places it in the Matakau at the back of his house, or in a little hut erected for it near the grave. It is the representative of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest respect." Two points are worthy of notice in this interesting account, as giving us an anticipatory hint of two further accessories whose evolution we must trace hereafter: first, the grave-stake, which is probably the origin of the wooden idol; the second, the little hut erected over the head by the side of the grave, which is undoubtedly one of the origins of the temple, or pray- ing-house. Observe, also, the ceremonial wrapping of the skull in cloth and its oracular functions. Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolution this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives as the chief known objects of worship survives undiluted: and ancestor- worship remains to this day the principal religion of the Chinese and of several other peoples. Gods, as such, are practically unknown in China. Ancestor-worship, also, survives in many other races as one of the main cults, even after other elements of later religion have been superimposed upon it. In Greece and Rome it remained to the last an important part of domestic ritual. But in most cases a gradual differentiation is set up in time between various classes of ghosts or dead persons, some ghosts being considered of more importance and power than others; and out of these last it is that gods as a rule are finally developed. A god, in fact, is in the beginning, at least, an ex- ceptionally powerful and friendly ghost — a ghost able to help, and from whose help great things may reasonably be expected. Again, the rise of chieftainship and kingship has much to do with the growth of a higher conception of godhead; a dead king of any great power or authority is sure to be thought of in time as a god of considerable importance. We shall trace out this idea more fully hereafter in the religion of Egypt; for the present it must suffice to say that the supposed power of the gods in each pantheon has regularly increased in proportion to the increased power of kings or emperors. When we pass from the first plane of corpse preservation and mummification to the second plane, where burial is habitual, it might seem, at a hasty glance, as though continued worship of the dead, and their elevation into gods, would no longer be possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the hving. Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the desire to insure their goodwill and aid, make these seemingly contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIBLE 57^ even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to wor- ship them; while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead from rising again become, in time, altars on which sacrifices are offered to the spirit. Much of the Bible is evidently legendary. Here we have a jumble of ancient myths, allegories, and mysteries drawn from many sources and remote ages, and adapted, altered, and edited so many times that in many instances their original or inner meaning has become obscure. And it is folly to accept the tangled legends and blurred or distorted symbols as the literal history of a literal tribe, and the literal account of the origin of man, and the genesis of religion. The real roots of religion lie far deeper: deeper, per- haps, than sun-worship, ghost-worship, and fear of demons. In The Real Origin of Religion occurs the fol- lowing : Quite recently theories have been advocated attempting to prove that the minds of early men were chiefly concerned with the increase of vegetation, and that their fancy played so much round the mysteries of plant growth that they made them their holiest arcana. Hence it appears that the savages were far more modest and refined than our civilized contemporaries, for almost all our works of imagination, both in literature and art, make human love their theme in all its aspects, whether healthy or pathological; whereas the savage, it seems, thought only of his crops. Nothing can be more astonishing than this discovery, if it be true, but there are many facts which might lead us to believe that the romance of love inspired early art and religion as well as modern thought. And again: Religion is a gorgeous efflorescence of human love. The tender passion has left its footsteps on the sands of time in magnificent monuments and libraries of theology. This may seem startling to many orthodox readers, but it is no new theory, and is doubtless quite true, for all gods have been made by man, and all theologies have 58 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR been evolved by man, and the odor and the color of his human passions cling to them always, even after they are discarded. Under all man's dreams of eternal gods and eternal heavens lies man's passion for the eternal femi- nine. But on these subjects " Moses " spoke in parables, and I shall not speak at all. Mr. Robertson, in Christianity and Mythology, says of the Bible : It is a medley of early metaphysics and early fable — early, that is, relatively to known Hebrew history. It ties together two creation stories and two flood stories; it duplicates several sets of mythic personages — as Cain and Abel, Tubal-Cain and Jabal; it grafts the curse of Cham on the curse of Cain, making that finally the curse of Canaan ; it tells the same offensive story twice of one patriarch, and again of another; it gives an early "metaphysical" theory of the origin of death, life, and evil; it adapts the Egyptian story of the " Two Brothers," or the myth of Adonis, as the history of Joseph; it makes use of various God-names, pretending that they always stood for the same deity ; it repeats traditions concerning mythic founders of races — if all this be not "a medley of early fable," what is it? I quote next from The Bible and the Child, in which Dean Farrar says : Some of the books of Scripture are separated from others by the interspace of a thousand years. They represent the frag- mentary survival of Hebrew literature. They stand on very dif- ferent levels of value, and even of morality. Read for centuries in an otiose, perfunctory, slavish, and superstitious manner, they have often been so egregiously misunderstood that many entire systems of interpretation — which were believed in for genera- tions, and which fill many folios, now consigned to a happy oblivion — are clearly proved to have been utterly baseless. Co- lossal usurpations of deadly import to the human race have been built, like inverted pyramids, on the narrow apex of a single mis- interpreted text. Compare those utterances of the freethinker and the divine, and then read the following words of Dean Far- rar: The manner in which the Higher Criticism has slowly and surely made its victorious progress, in spite of the most de- termined and exacerbated opposition, is a strong argument in its THE EVOLUTION OE THE BIBLE 59 favor. It is exactly analogous to the way in which the truths of astronomy and of geology have triumphed over universal op- position. They were once anathematized as " infidel " ; they are now accepted as axiom.atic. I cannot name a single student or professor of any eminence in Great Britain who does not ac- cept, with more or less modification, the main conclusions of the German school of critics. This being the case, I ask, as a mere layman, what right has the Bible to usurp the title of " the word of God " ? What evidence can be sharked up to show that it is any more a holy or an inspired book than any book of Thomas Carlyle's, or John Ruskin's, or William Morris'? What evidence is forthcoming that the Bible is true? THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING TO ANCIENT RE- LIGION AND MODERN SCIENCE The theory of the early Christian Church was that the Earth was flat, Hke a plate, and the sky was a solid dome above it, like an inverted blue basin. The Sun revolved round the Earth to give light by day, the Moon revolved round the Earth to give light by night. The stars were auxiliary lights, and had all been specially, and at the same time, created for the good of man. God created the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Earth in six days. He created them by word, and He created them out of nothing. The center of the Universe was the Earth. The Sun was made to give light to the Earth by day, and the Moon to give light to Earth by night. Any man who denied that theory in those days was in danger of being murdered as an Infidel. To-day our ideas are very different. Hardly any edu- cated man or woman in the world believes that the world is flat, or that the Sun revolves round the Earth, or that what we call the sky is a solid substance, like a domed ceiling. Advanced thinkers, even amongst the Christians, be- lieve that the world is round, that it is one of a series of planets revolving round the Sun, that the Sun is only one of many millions of other suns, that these suns were not created simultaneously, but at different periods, prob- ably separated by millions or billions of years. 60 ANCIENT RELIGION 6l< We have all, Christians and Infidels alike, been obliged to acknowledge that the Earth is not the center of the whole Universe, but only a minor planet revolving around and dependent upon, one of myriads of suns. God, called by Christians " Our Heavenly Father," cre- ated all things. He created not only the world, but the whole universe. He is all-wise, He is all-powerful. He is all-loving, and He is revealed to us in the Scriptures. Let us see. Let us try to imagine what kind of a God the creator of this Universe would be, and let us com- pare him with the God, or Gods, revealed to us in the Bible, and in the teachings of the Church. We have seen the account of the Universe and its crea- tion, as given in the revealed Scriptures. Let us now take a hasty view of the Universe and its creation as re- vealed to us by science. What is the Universe like, as far as our limited knowl- edge goes? Our Sun is only one sun amongst many millions. Our planet is only one of eight which revolve around him. Our Sun, with his planets and comets, comprises what is known as the solar system. There is no reason to suppose that this is the only Solar System: there may be many millions of solar systems. For aught we know, there may be millions of systems, each containing millions of solar systems. Let us deal first with the solar system of which we are a part. The Sun is a globe of 866,200 miles diameter. His diameter is more than 108 times that of the Earth. His volume is 1,305,000 times the volume of the Earth. All the eight planets added together only make one-seven- hundredth part of his weight. His circumference is more than two and a half millions of miles. He revolves upon 62 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR his axis in 25^ days, or at a speed of nearly 4000 miles an hour. This immense and magnificent globe diffuses heat and light to all the other planets. Without the light and heat of the Sun no life would now be, or in the past have been, possible on this Earth, or any other planet of the solar system. The eight planets of the solar system are divided into four inferior and four superior. The inferior planets are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars. The superior are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The diameters of the smaller planets are as follow: Mercury, 3008 miles; Mars, 5000 miles; Venus, 7480 miles ; the Earth, 7926 miles. The diameters of the large planets are : Jupiter, 88,439 miles; Saturn, 75,036 miles; Neptune, 37,205 miles; Uranus, 30,875 miles. The volume of Jupiter is 1389 times, of Saturn 848 times, of Neptune 103 times, and of Uranus 59 times the volume of the Earth. The mean distances from the Sun are: Mercury, 36 million miles; Venus, 67 million miles; the Earth, 93 million miles ; Mars, 141 million miles ; Jupiter, 483 mil- lion miles ; Saturn, 886 million miles ; Uranus, 1782 mil- lion miles ; Neptune, 2792 million miles. To give an idea of the meaning of these distances, I may say that a train traveling night and day at 60 miles an hour would take quite 176 years to come from the Sun to the Earth. The same train, at the same speed, would be 5280 years in traveling from the Sun to Neptune. Reckoning that Neptune is the outermost planet of the ANCIENT RELIGION 63 solar system, that system would have a diameter of 5584 millions of miles. If we made a chart of the solar system on a scale of I inch to a million miles, we should need a sheet of paper 465 feet 4 inches wide. On this sheet the Sun would have a diameter of less than i inch, and the Earth would be about the size of a pin-prick. If an express train, going at 60 miles an hour, had to travel round the Earth's orbit, it would be more than 1000 years on the journey. If the Earth moved no fas- ter, our winter would last more than 250 years. But in the solar system the speeds are as wonderful as the sizes. The Earth turns upon its axis at the rate of 1000 miles an hour, and travels in its orbit round the Sun at the rate of more than 1000 miles a minute, or 66,000 miles an hour. So much for the size of the solar system. It consists of a Sun and eight planets, and the outer planet's orbit is one of 5584 millions of miles in diameter, which it would take an express train, at 60 miles an hour, 10,560 years to cross. But this distance is as nothing when we come to deal with the distances of the other stars from our Sun. The distance from our Sun to the nearest fixed (?) star is more than 20 millions of millions of miles. Our express train, which crosses the diameter of the solar sys- tem in 10,560 years, would take, if it went 60 miles an hour day and night, about 40 million years to reach the nearest fixed star from the Sun. And if we had to mark the nearest fixed star on our chart made on a scale of I inch to the million miles, we should find that whereas a sheet of 465 feet would take in the outermost planet ©f the solar system, a sheet to take in 64 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR the nearest fixed star would have to be about 620 miles wide. On this sheet, as wide as from London to In- verness, the Sun would be represented by a dot three- quarters of an inch in diameter, and the Earth by a pin- prick. But these immense distances only relate to the nearest stars. Now, the nearest stars are about four " light years " distant from us. That is to say, that light, trav- eling at a rate of about 182,000 miles in one second, takes four years to come from the nearest fixed star to the Earth. But I have seen the distance from the Earth to the Great Nebula in Orion given as a thousand light years, or 250 times the distance of the fixed star above al- luded to. To reach that nebula at 60 miles an hour, an express train would have to travel for 35 millions of years mul- tiplied by 250 — that is to say, for 8750 million years. And yet there are millions of stars whose distances are even greater than the distance of the Great Nebula in Orion. How many stars are there? No one can even guess. But L. Struve estimates the number of those visible to the great telescopes at 20 millions. Twenty millions of suns. And as for the size of these suns, Sir Robert Ball says Sirius is ten times as large as our Sun; and a well-known astronomer, writing in the English Mechanic about a week ago, remarks that Alpha Orionis (Betelgenze) has probably 700 times the light of our Sun. Looking through my telescope, which is only 3-inch aperture, I have seen star clusters of wonderful beauty in the Ple'iades and in Cancer. There is, in the latter constellation, a dim star which, when viewed through my ANCIENT RELIGION 65 glass, becomes a constellation larger, more brilliant, and more beautiful than Orion or the Great Bear. I have looked at these jeweled sun-clusters many a time, and wondered over them. But I have never once thought of believing that they were specially created to be lesser lights to the Earth. And now let me quote from that grand book of Richard A. Proctor's, The Expanse of Heaven, a fine passage de- scriptive of some of the wonders of the " Milky Way " : There are stars in all orders of brightness, from those which (seen with the telescope) resemble in lus- ter the leading glories of the firmament, down to tiny points of light only caught by momentary twinklings. Every variety of arrangement is seen. Here the stars are scattered as over the skies at night; there they cluster in groups, as though drawn together by some irresistible power; in one region they seem to form sprays of stars like diamonds sprinkled over fern leaves ; elsewhere they lie in streams and rows, in coro- nets and loops and festoons, resembling the star fes- toon which, in the constellation Perseus, garlands the black robe of night. Nor are varieties of color wanting to render the display more wonderful and more beau- tiful. Many of the stars which crowd upon the view are red, orange, and yellow. Among them are groups of two and three and four (multiple stars as they are called), amongst which blue and green and lilac and purple stars appear, forming the most charming con- trast to the ruddy and yellow orbs near which they are commonly seen. Millions and millions — countless millions of suns. In- numerable galaxies and systems of suns, separated by black gulfs of space so wide that no man can realize the meaning of the figures which denote their stretch. Suns 66 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR of fire and ligKt, whirling through vast oceans of spac« like swarms of golden bees. And round them planets whirling at thousands of miles a minute. And on Earth there are forms of life so minute that millions of them exist in a drop of water. There are microscopic creatures more beautiful and more highly finished than any gem, and more complex and effective than the costliest machine of human contrivance. In The Story of Creation Mr. Ed. Clodd tells us that one cubic inch of rotten stone contains 41 thousand milUon vegetable skeletons of diatoms. I cut the following from a London morning paper: It was discovered some few years ago that a peculiar bacillus was present in all persons suffering from typhoid, and in all foods and drinks which spread the disease. Experiments were carried out, and it was assumed, not without good reason, that the bacillus was the primary cause of the malady, and it was ac- cordingly labeled the typhoid bacillus. But the bacteriologists further discovered that the typhoid bacillus was present in water which was not infectious, and in persons who were not ill, or had never been ill, with typhoid. So now a theory is propounded that a healthy typhoid bacillus does not cause typhoid, but that it is only when the bacillus is itself sick of a fever, or, in other words, is itself the prey of some infinitely minuter organisms, which feed on it alone, that it works harm to mortal men. The bacillus is so small that one requires a powerful microscope to see him, and his blood may be infested with bacilli as small to him as he is to us. And there are millions, and more likely billions, of suns! Talk about Aladdin's palace, Sinbad's valley of dia- monds, Macbeth's witches, or the Irish fairies! How petty are their exploits, how tawdry are their splendors, how paltry are their riches, when we compare them to the romance of science. When did a poet conceive an idea^ so vast and so as- ANCIENT RELIGION 67 tounding as the theory of evolution? What are a few paltry lumps of crystallized carbon compared to a galaxy of a million million suns? Did any Eastern inventor of marvels ever suggest such a human feat as that accom- plished by the men who have, during the last handful of centuries, spelt out the mystery of the universe ? These scientists have worked miracles before which those of the ancient priests and magicians are mere tricks of hanky- panky. Look at the romance of geology; at the romance of astronomy ; at the romance of chemistry ; at the romance of the telescope, and the microscope, and the prism. More wonderful than all, consider the story of how flying atoms in space became suns, how suns made planets, how planets changed from spheres of flame and raging fiery storm to worlds of land and water. How in the water specks of jelly became fishes, fishes reptiles, reptiles mammals, mammals monkeys, monkeys men ; until, from the fanged and taloned cannibal, roosting in a forest, have developed art and music, religion and science ; and the children of the jellyfish can weigh the suns, measure the stellar spaces, ride on the ocean or in the air, and speak to each other from continent to continent. Talk about fairy tales ! what is this ? You may look through a telescope, and see the nebula that is to make a sun floating, like a luminous mist, three hundred million miles away. You may look again, and see another sun in process of formation. You may look again, and see others almost completed. You may look again and again, and see millions of suns and systems spread out across the heavens Hke rivers of living gems. You will say that all this speaks of a Creator. I shall not contradict you. But what kind of Creator must He be who has created such a universe as this? 68 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR Do you think He is the kind of Creator to make blunders and commit crimes ? Can you, after once think- ing of the Milky Way, with its rivers of suns, and the drop of water teeming with spangled dragons, and the awful abysses of dark space, through which comets shoot at a speed a thousand times as fast as an express train — can you, after seeing Saturn's rings, and Jupi- ter's moons, and the clustered gems of Hercules, consent for a moment to the allegation that the creator of all this power and glory got angry with men, and threatened them with scabs and sores, and plagues of lice and frogs ? Can you suppose that such a creator would, after thou- sands of years of effort, have failed even now to make His repeated revelations comprehensible? Do you be- lieve that He would be driven across the unimaginable gulfs of space, out of the transcendent glory of His myriad resplendent suns, to die on a cross, in order to win back to Him the love of the puny creatures on one puny planet in the marvelous universe His power had made? Do you believe that the God who imagined and created such a universe could be petty, base, cruel, revengeful, and capable of error? I do not believe it. And now let us examine the character and conduct of this God as depicted for us in the Bible — the book which is alleged to have been directly revealed by God Himself. JEHOVAH The Adopted Heavenly Father of Christianity In giving the above brief sketch of the known universe my object was to suggest that the Creator of a universe of such scope and grandeur must be a Being of vast power and the loftiest dignity. Now, the Christians claim that their God created this universe — not the universe He is described, in His own inspired word, as creating, but the universe revealed by science ; the universe of twenty millions of suns. And the Christians claim that this God is a God of love, a God omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. And the Christians claim that this great God, the Creator of our wonderful universe, is the God revealed to us in the Bible. Let us, then, go to the Bible, and find out for our- selves whether the God therein revealed is any more like the ideal Christian God, than the universe therein re- vealed is like the universe since discovered by man with- out the aid of divine inspiration. As for the biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all- wise, nor all-powerful nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonorable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel. Neither was He, in any sense of the words, great nor good. But, in fact. He was a tribal god, an idol, made 69 70 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR by man ; and, as the idol of a savage and ignorant tribe, was Himself a savage and ignorant monster. First, then, as to my claim that Jahweh, or Jehovah, was a tribal god. I shall begin by quoting from Shall We Understand th€ Bible? by the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams : The theology of the Jahwist is very childish and elementary, though it is not all on the same level. He thinks of God very much as in human form, holding intercourse with men almost as one of themselves. His document begins with Genesis ii, 4, and its first portion continues, without break, to the end of chapter iv. This portion contains the story of Eden. Here Jahew molds dust into human form,^ and breathes into it; plants a garden, and puts the man in it. Jahweh comes to the man in his sleep, and takes part of his body to make a woman, and so skillfully, apparently, that the man never wakes under the opera- tion. Jahweh walks in the garden like a man in the cool of the day. He even makes coats for Adam and Eve. Further on the Jahwist has a flood story, in which Jahweh repents that he had made man, and decides to drown him, saving only one family. When all is over, and Noah sacrifices on his new altar, Jahweh smells a sweet savor, just as a hungry man smells welcome food. When men build the Tower of Babel, Jahweh comes down to see it — he cannot see it from where he is. In Genesis xviii the Jahwist tells a story of three men coming to Abraham's tent. Abraham gives them water to wash their feet, and bread to eat, and Sarah makes cakes for them, and " they did eat " ; altogether, they seemed to have had a nice time. As the story goes on, he leaves you to infer that one of these was Jahweh himself. It is J. who describes the story of Jacob wrestling with some mys- terious person, who, by inference, is Jahweh. He tells a very strange story in Exodus iv, 24, that when Moses was returning into Egypt, at Jahweh's own request, Jahweh met him at a lodg- ing-place, and sought to kill him. In Exodus xiv, 15, it is said Jahweh took the wheels off the chariots of the Egyptians. If we wanted to believe that such statements were true at all, we should resort to the device of saying they were figurative. But J. meant them literally. The Jahwist would have no difficulty in thinking of God in this way. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah belongs to this same document, in which, you remember, Jahweh says : " I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know" (Gtn. xviii, 21). That God was omniscient and omnipresent had never oc- curred to the Jahwist. Jahweh, like a man, had to go and see if he wanted to know. There is, however, some compensation in the fact that he can move about without difficulty — he can come JEHOVAH JP down and go up. One might say, perhaps, that in J., though Jahweh cannot be everywhere, he can go to almost any place. All this is just like a child's thought. The child, at Christmas, can believe that, though Santa Claus cannot be everywhere, he can move about with wonderful facility, and, though he is a man, he is rather mysterious. The Jahwist's thought of God repre- sents the childhood stage of the national life. Later, Mr. Williams writes: All this shows that at one time Jahweh was one of many Gods; other gods were real gods. The Israelites themselves be- lieved, for example, that Chemosh was as truly the god of the Moabites as Jahweh was theirs, and they speak of Chemosh giv- ing territory to his people to inherit, just as Jahweh had given them territory (Judg. xi. 24). Just as a King of Israel would speak of Jahweh, the King of Moab speaks of Chemosh. His god sends him to battle. If he is defeated, the god is angry; if he succeeds, the god is favor- able. And we have seen that there was a time when the Israelite believed Chemosh to be as real for Moab as Jahweh for him- self. You find the same thing everywhere. The old Assyrian kings said exactly the same thing of the god Assur. Assur sent them to battle, gave defeat or victory, as he thought fit. The history, however, is very obscure up to the time of Samuel, and uncertain for some time after. Samuel organized a Jahweh party. David worshiped Jahweh only, though he re- gards it as possible to be driven out of Jahweh's inheritance into that of other gods (i Sam. xxvi. 19). Solomon was not ex- clusively devoted to Jahweh, for he built places of worship for other deities as well. In the chapter on " Different Conceptions of Prov- idence in the Bible '' Mr. Williams says : I have asked you to read Judges iii. 15-30, iv. 17-24, v. 24-31. The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel's enemy, by deceit, and killing him — an act followed by a great slaughter of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play the friend to Sisera, and then murdering him. The third is the eulogy of Jael for doing so, as "blessed above women," in the so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see. Providence is only concerned with the fortunes of Israel ; any deceit and any cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals, except as the individual serves or opposes Israel. In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception of God was a very low one, and that 72 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR it underwent considerable change. In fact, he says, with great candor and courage, that the early Bible concep- tion of God is one which we cannot now accept. With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and are ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but because mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too honorable to tolerate Jehovah. And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death, or excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to come. It is as- tounding. But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, The Evolution of the Idea of God, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear of Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in a box or ark. I will quote as fully as space permits : But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch — which seem likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through their strenuous Jehovistic editing — he was carried from Shiloh in his ark to the front during the great battle with the Philistines at Ebenezer ; and the Philistines were afraid, for they said, " A god is come into the camp." But when the Philistines captured the ark, the rival god, Dagon, fell down and broke in pieces — so Hebrew legend declared — before the face of Jahweh. After the Philistines restored the sacred object, it rested for a time at Kirjath-jearim till David, on the capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, went down to that place to bring up from thence the ark of the god ; and as it went, on a new cart, they " played before Jahweh on all manner of instruments," and David him- self " danced before Jahweh." . . . The children of Israel in early times carried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh, whose presence in their midst was intimately connected with a JEHOVAH 73 certain ark or chest containing a stone object or objects. This chest was readily portable, and could be carried to the front in case of warfare. They did not know the origin of the object in the ark with certainty; but they regarded it emphatically as "Jahweh their god, which led them out of the land of Egypt." ... 1 do not see, therefore, how we can easily avoid the obvious inference that Jahweh, the god of the Hebrews, who later be- came sublimated and etherealized into the God of Christianity, was, in his origin, nothing more nor less than the ancestral sacred stone of the people of Israel, however sculptured, and, perhaps, in the very last resort of all, the unhewn monumental pillar of some early Semitic sheikh or chieftain. It was, indeed, as the Rev. C. E. Beeby says, in his book Creed and Life, a sad mistake of St. Augustine to tack this tribal fetish in his box on to the Christian rehgion as the All-Father, and Creator of the Universe. For Jehovah was a savage war-god, and, as such, was impotent to save the tribe who worshiped him. But let us look further into the accounts of this orig- inal God of the Christians, and see how he comported himself, and let us put our examples under separate heads; thus: Jehovah's Anger Jahweh's bad temper is constantly displayed in the Bible. Jahweh made a man, whom he supposed to be perfect. When the man turned bad on his hands, Jahweh was angry, and cursed him and his seed for thousands of years. This vindictive act is accepted by the Apostle Paul as a natural thing for a God of Love to do. Jahweh, who had already cursed all the seed of Adam, was so angry about man's sin, in the time of Noah, that he decided to drown all the people on the earth except Noah's family, and not only that, but to drown nearly all the innocent animals as well. When the children of Irsael, who had eaten nothing 74 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR but manna for forty years, asked Jahweh for a change of diet, Jahweh lost his temper again, and sent amongst them " fiery serpents," so that " much people of Israel died." But still the desire for other food remained, and the Jews wept for meat. Then the Lord ordered Moses to speak to the people as follows : . . . The Lord will give you flesh, and ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days nor twenty days ; but even a whole month, until it come out of your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you ; because that ye have despised the Lx)rd, which is among you, and have wept be- fore Him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt? Then Jahwah sent immense numbers of quails, and the people ate them, and the anger of their angry god came upon them in the act, and smote them with " a very great plague." One more instance out of many. In the First Book of Samuel we are told that on the return of Jahweh in his ark from the custody of the Philistines some men of Bethshemesh looked into the ark. This made Jahweh so angry that he smote the people, and slew more than fifty thousand of them. The Injustice of Jehovah I have already instanced Jahweh's injustice in cursing the seed of Adam for Adam's sin, and in destroying the whole animal creation, except a selected few, because he was angry with mankind. In the Book of Samuel we are told that Jahweh sent three years' famine upon the whole nation because of the sins of Saul, and that his wrath was only appeased by the hanging in cold blood of seven of Saul's sons for the evil committed by their father. In the Book of Joshua is the story of how Achan, having stolen some gold, was ordered to be burnt; and JEHOVAH 75 how Joshua and the IsraeUtes took " Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had," and stoned them to death, and " burnt them with fire." In the First Book of Chronicles the devil persuades David to take a census of Israel. And again Jahweh acted in bhnd wrath and injustice, for he sent a pesti- lence, which slew seventy thousand of the people for David's fault. But David he allowed to live. In Samuel we learn how Jahweh, because of an attack upon the Israelites four hundred years before the time of speaking, ordered Saul to destroy the Amalekites, " man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." And Saul did as he was directed; but because he spared King Agag, the Lord deprived him of the crown, and made David king in his stead. The Immorality of Jehovah In the Second Book of Chronicles Jehovah gets Ahab, King of Israel, killed by putting Hes into the mouths of the prophets: And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one spake saying after this manner, and another saying after that man- ner. Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him, Where- with ? And he said, I will go out, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: go out, and do even so. In Deuteronomy are the following orders as to con- duct in war: When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive. y6 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month; and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shall let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her. The children of Israel, having been sent out by Jahweh to punish the Midianites, " slew all the males." But Moses was wroth, because they had spared the women, and he ordered them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women " for themselves." The Lord allowed this brutal act — which included the murder of all the male children — to be consummated. There were sixteen thousand females spared, of which we are told that " the Lord's tribute was thirty and two." The Cruelty of Jehovah I could find in the Bible more instances of Jahweh's cruelty and barbarity and lack of mercy than I can find room for. In Deuteronomy the Lord hardens the heart of Sihon, King of Hesbon, to resist the Jews, and then " utterly destroyed the men, women, and little ones of every city.*' In Leviticus, Jahweh threatens that if the Israelites will not reform he will " walk contrary to them in fury, and they shall eat the Hesh of their own sons and daugh- ters." In Deuteronomy is an account of how Bashan was ut- terly destroyed, men, women, and children being slain. In the same book occur the following passages : — JEHOVAH 'j'j When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. That is from chapter vii. In chapter xx. there are further instructions of a like horrible kind: Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from, thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. And here, in a long quotation, is an example of the mercy of Jahweh, and his faculty for cursing: The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land, whither thou goest to possess it. The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish. And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust; from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be de- stroyed. The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways be- fore them; and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The Lord shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: . . . And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and y% GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land : and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil towards his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave. . . . For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn into the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the voung man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. I think I have quoted enough to show that what I say of the Jewish God Jehovah is based on fact. But I could, if needful, heap proof on proof, for the books of the Old Testament reek with blood, and are horrible with atrocities. Now, consider, is the God of whom we have been reading a God of love ? Is He the Father of Christ? Is He not rather the savage idol of a savage tribe? Man and his gods: what a tragi-comedy it is. Man has never seen one of his gods, never heard the voice of one of his gods, does not know the shape, expression, or bearing of one of his gods. Yet man has cursed man, hated man, hunted man, tortured man, and murdered man, for the sake of shadows and fantasies of his own terror, or vanity, or desire. We tiny, vain feeblenesses, we fussy ephemera ; we sting each other, hate each other, hiss at each other, for the sake of the monster gods of our own delirium. As we are whirled upon our spin- ning, glowing planet through the unfathomable spaces JEHOVAH 79 where myriads of suns, like golden bees, gleam through the awful mystery of " the vast void night," what are the phantom gods to us ? They are no more than the water- spouts on the ocean, or the fleeting shadows on the hills. But the man, and the woman, and the child, and the dog with its wistful eyes : these know us, touch us, appeal to us, love us, serve us, grieve us. Shall we kill these, or revile them, or desert them, for the. sake of the lurid ghost in the cloud, or the fetish in his box? Do you think the bloodthirsty vindictive Jahweh, who prized nothing but his own aggrandizement, and slew or cursed all who offended him, is the Creator, the same who made the jewels of the Pleiades, and the resplendent mystery of the Milky Way? Is this unspeakable monster, Jahweh, the Father of Christ ? Is he the God who inspired Buddha, and Shake- speare, and Herschel, and Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debase- ment of women ; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter — we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruth- less nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch our cities, imperfect as we are. The thought of him de- files and nauseates. We should think him too horrible and pitiless for a devil, this red-handed, black-hearted Jehovah of the Jews. And yet : in the inspired Book, in the Holy Bible, this awful creature is still enshrined as " God the Father 8o GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR Almighty." It is marvelous. It is beyond the compre- hension of any man not blinded by superstition, not warped by prejudice and old-time convention. This the God of Heaven? This the Father of Christ? This the Creator of the Milky Way? No. He will not do. He is not big enough. He is not good enough. He is not clean enough. He is a spiritual nightmare : a bad dream born in savage minds of terror and ignorance and a tiger- ish lust for blood. But if He is not the Most High, if He is not the Heavenly Father, if He is not the King of kings, the Bible is not an inspired book, and its claim to divine revelation will not stand. THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE Carlyle said we might judge a people by their heroes. The heroes of the Bible, like the God of the Bible, are immoral savages. That is because the Bible is a compila- tion from the Hterature of savage and immoral tribes. Had the Bible been the word of God we should have found in it a lofty and a pure ideal of God. We should not have found in it open approval — divine approval — of such unspeakable savages as Moses, David, Solomon, Jacob, and Lot. Let us consider the lives of a few of the Bible heroes. We will begin with Moses. We used to be taught in school that Moses was the meekest man the world has known: and we used to marvel. It is written in the second chapter of Exodus thus : And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their bur- dens : and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the -sand. And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together : and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said. Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me as thou killest the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. The meekest of men slays an Egyptian deliberately and in cold blood. It may be pleaded that the Egyptian was doing wrong; but the remarks of the Hebrew suggest 8i B2 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR that even the countrymen of Moses looked upon his act of violence with disfavor. But the meekness of Moses is further illustrated in the laws attributed to him, in which the death penalty is al- most as common as it was in England in the Middle Ages. Also, in the thirty-first chapter of Numbers we have the following story. The Lord commands Moses to *' avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites," after which Moses is to die. Moses sends out an army : And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord com- manded Moses ; and they slew all the males. And they slew the kings of Midian, besides the rest of them that were slain ; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. . . . And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive ? Behold, these called the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Moses is a patriarch of the Jews, and the meekest man. But suppose any pagan or Mohammedan general were to behave to a Qiristian city as Moses behaved to the peo- ple of Midian, what should we say of him? But God was pleased with him. THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE 83 Further, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers you will find how Moses the Meek treated Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for rebelHng against himself and Aaron; how the earth opened and swallowed these men and their families and friends, at a hint from Moses ; and how the I-ord slew with fire from heaven two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense, and how afterwards there came a pestilence by which some fourteen thousand persons died. Moses was a politician; his brother was a priest. I shall express no opinion of the pair ; but I quote from the Book of Exodus, as follows : And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go be- fore us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And Aaron said unto them. Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said. These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it ; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt of- ferings, and brought peace offerings ; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. Aaron, when asked by Moses why he has done this thing, tells a lie: And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them? And Aaron said. Let not the anger of my lord wax hot ; thou knowest 'the people, that they are set on mischief. For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before 84 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR us : for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it to me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:) Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord's side ? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses ; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. So much for this meek father of the Jews. And now let us consider David and his son Solomon, the greatest of the Bible kings, and the ancestors of Jesus Christ. Judging King David by the Bible record, I should con- clude that he was a cruel, treacherous, and licentious savage. He lived for some time as a bandit, robbing the subjects of the King of Gath, who had given him shel- ter. When asked about this by the king, David lied. As to the nature of his conduct at this time, no room is left for doubt by the story of Nabal. David demanded black- mail of Nabal, and, on its being refused, set out with four hundred armed men to rob Nabal, and kill every male on his estate. This he was prevented from doing by Nabal's wife, who came out to meet David with fine presents and fine words. Ten days later Nabal died, and David married his widow. See twenty-fifth chapter First Book of Samuel. David had seven wives, and many children. One of his favorite wives was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah. While Uriah was at "the front," fighting for David, that king seduced his wife, Bathsheba. To avoid dis- covery, David recalled Uriah from the war, and bade THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE 85 him go home to his wife. Uriah said it would dishonor him to seek ease and pleasure at home while other sol- diers were enduring hardship at the front. The king then made the soldier drunk, but even so could not pre- vail. Therefore David sent word to the general to place Uriah in the front of the battle, where the fight was hard- est. And Uriah was killed, and David married Bath- sheba, who became the mother of Solomon. So much for David's honor. Now for a sample of his humanity. I quote from the twelfth chapter of the Sec- ond Book of Samuel: And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought against Rabbah, and have taken the city of waters. Now therefore gather the rest of the people together, and en- camp against the city, and take it: lest I take the city, and it be called after my name. And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rab- bah, and fought against it, and took it. And he took their king's crown from off his head, the weight whereof was a talent of gold with the precious stones: and it was set on David's head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance. And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem. But nothing in David's life became him so little as his leaving of it. I quote from the second chapter of the First Book of Kings. David, on his deathbed, is speak- ing to Solomon, his son : Moreover thou knowest also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me, and what he did to the two captains of the hosts of Israel, unto Abner the son of Ner, and unto Amasa the son of Jether, whom he slew, and shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war upon his girdle that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his feet. Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoa* head go down to the grave in peace. S6 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR But show kindness unto the sons of Barzillai, the Gileadite, and let them be of those that eat at thy table: for so they came to me when I fled because of Absalom thy brother. And, behold, thou hast with thee Shimei the son of Gera, a Benjamite of Bahurim, which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when I went to Mahanaim; but he came down to meet me at Jordan, and I sware to him by the Lord, saying, I will not put thee to death with the sword. Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him; but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood. These seem to have been the last words spoken by King David. Joab v^as his best general, and had many times saved David's throne. Solomon began by stealing the throne from his brother, the true heir. Then he murders the brother he has robbed, and disgraces and exiles a priest, who had been long a faithful friend to David, his father. Later, he murders Joab at the altar, and brings down the hoar head of Shimei to the grave with blood. After which he gets him much wisdom, builds a tem- ple, and marries many vnves. Much glamor has been cast upon the names of Solo- mon and David by their alleged writings. But it is now acknowledged that David wrote few, if any, of the Psalms, and that Solomon wrote neither Ecclesiastes nor the Song of Songs, though some of the Proverbs may be his. It seems strange to me that such men as Moses, David, and Solomon should be glorified by Christian men and women who execrate Henry VIII. and Richard III. as monsters. My pet aversion amongst the Bible heroes is Jacob ; but Abraham and Lot were pitiful creatures. Jacob cheated his brother out of the parental blessing, and lied about God, and lied to his father to accomplish THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE 87 his end. He robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his necessity. He fled from his brother's wrath, and went to his uncle Laban. Here he cheated his uncle out of his cattle and his wealth, and at last came away with his two cousins as his wives, one of whom had stolen her own father's gods. Abraham was the father of Ishmael by the servant- maid Hagar. At his wife's demand he allowed Hagar and Ishmael to be driven into the desert to die. And here is another pretty story of Abraham. He and his family are driven forth by a famine: And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon : Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake ; and my soul shall live because of thee. And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her be- fore Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake : and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels. And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. And Pharaoh called Abram, and said. What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife? Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I rnight have taken her to me to wife : now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way. And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had. But Abraham was so little ashamed of himself that he did the same thing again, many years afterwards, and Abimelech, King of Gerar, behaved to him as nobly as did King Pharaoh on the former occasion. 88 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR The story of Lot is too disgusting to repeat. But what are we to think of his offering his daughters to the mob, and of his subsequent conduct? And what of Noah, who got drunk, and then cursesd the whole of his sons' descendants forever, because Ham had seen him in his shame? Joseph seems to me to have been anything but an admirable character, and I do not see how his baseness in depriving the Egyptians of their liberties and their land by a corner in wheat can be condoned. Jacob robbed his brother of his birthright by trading on his hunger; Joseph robbed a whole people in the same way. Samson was a dissolute ruffian and murderer, who in these days would be hanged as a brigand. Reuben committed incest. Simeon and Levi were guilty of treachery and massacre. Judah was guilty of immorality and hypocrisy. Joshua was a Jewish general of the usual type. When he captured a city he murdered every man, woman, and child within its walls. Here is one example from the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua: And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against it: And he took it, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof ; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly- destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none remain- ing: as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the king thereof; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king. So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded. And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. Elijah the prophet was of the same uncompromising kind. After he had mocked the god Baal, and had tri- umphed over him by a miracle, he said to the Israelites : THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE 89 "Take the prophets of Baal. Let not one of them escape." And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there. Now, there were 450 of the priests of Baal, all of whom Elijah the prophet had killed in cold blood. And here is a story about Elisha, another great prophet of the Jews. I quote from the second chapter of the Second Book of Kings : And he went up from thence unto Bethel : and as he was go- ing up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head ; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. After this, Elisha assists King Jehoram and two other kings to waste and slaughter the Moabites, who had re- fused to pay tribute. You may read the horrible story for yourselves in the third chapter of the Second Book of Kings. There was the usual massacre, but this time the trees were cut down and the wells choked up. Later, Elisha cures a man of leprosy, and refuses a reward. But his servant runs after the man, and gets two talents of silver and some garments under false pre- tenses. When Elisha hears of this crime, he strikes the servant with leprosy, and all his seed forever. Now, it is not necessary for me to harp upon the con- duct of these men of God : what I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savages have been saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and as models. Even to-day the man who called David, or Moses, or Elisha by his proper name in an average Christian house- hold would be regarded as a wicked blasphemer. And yet, what would a Christian congregation say of an " Infidel " who committed half the crimes and out- rages of any one of those Bible heroes? 90 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR Do you know what the Christians called Tom Paine? To this day the respectable Christian church- or chapel- goer shudders at the name of the " infidel," Tom Paine. But in point of honor, of virtue, of humanity, and gen- eral good character, not one of the Bible heroes I have mentioned was worthy to clean Tom Paine's shoes. Now, it states in the Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esau was a man, and against him the Bible does not chronicle one bad act. But God hated Esau. And it states in the Bible that Elijah went up in a chariot of fire to heaven. And in the New Testament Christ or His apostles speak of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as being in heaven. Paul speaks of David as a " man after God's own heart " ; Elijah and Moses come down from heaven, and appear talking with Christ ; and, in Hebrews, Paul praises Sam- uel, Jephtha, Samson, and David. My point is not that these heroes were bad men, but that, in a book alleged to be the word of God, they are treated as heroes. I have been accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarous kings and priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian with disrespect to the memory of Nero. I have been accused of having an animus against Moses, and David, and all the rest. I have no animus against any man, nor do I presume to censure my fellow creatures. I only wish to show that these favorites of God were not admirable characters, and that therefore the Bible cannot be a divine revelation. As for animus : I do not believe any of these men ever existed. I regard them as myths. Should one be angry with a myth? I THE HEROES OF THE BIBLE 91 should as soon think of being angry with Bluebeard, or the Giant that Jack slew. But I should be astonished to hear that Bluebeard had been promoted to the position of a holy patriarch, and a model of all the virtues for the emulation of inno- cent children in a modern Sunday school. And I think it is time the Church considered itself, and told the truth about Jehovah, and Moses, and Joshua, and Samson. If you fail to agree with me I can only accept your decision with respectful astonishment. THE BOOK OF BOOKS Floods of sincere, but unmerited, adulation have been lavished on the Hebrew Bible. The world has many books of higher moral and literary value. It would be easy to compile, from the words of Heretics and Infidels, a purer and more elevated moral guide than this " Book of Books." The ethical code of the Old Testament is no longer suitable as the rule of life. The moral and intellectual advance of the human race has left it behind. The historical books of the Old Testament are largely pernicious, and often obscene. These books describe, without disapproval, polygamy, slavery, concubinage, lying and deceit, treachery, incest, murder, wars of plun- der, wars of conquest, massacre of prisoners of war, mas- sacre of women and of children, cruelty to animals ; and such immoral, dishonest, shameful, or dastardly deeds as those of Solomon, David, Abraham, Jacob, and Lot. The ethical code of the Old Testament does not teach the sacredness of truth, does not teach religious tolerance, nor humanity, nor human brotherhood, nor peace. Its morality is crude. Much that is noblest in modern thought has no place in the " Book of Books." For ex- ample, take these words of Herbert Spencer's : Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. There is nothing so comprehensive, nothing so deep as that in the Bible. That covers all the moralities of the Ten Commandments, and all the Ethics of the Law 92 THE BOOK OF BOOKS 93 and the Prophets, in one short sentence, and leaves a handsome surplus over. Note next this, from Kant ; What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are-the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others. I do not know a Bible sentence so purely moral as that. And in what part of the Bible shall we find a parallel to the following sentence, from an Agnostic newspaper: Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action are helps to the children of men in their search for wisdom. Tom Paine left Moses and Isaiah centuries behind when he wrote : The world is my country: to do good my religion. Robert Ingersoll, another " Infidel," surpassed Solo- mon when he said: The object of life is to be happy, the place to be happy is here, the time to be happy is now, the way to be happy is by making others happy. Which simple sentence contains more wisdom than all the pessimism of the King of kings. And again, Inger- soll went beyond the sociological conception of the Prophets when he wrote : And let us do away for ever with the idea that the care of the sick, of the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity: it is a duty. It is something to be done for our own sakes. It is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the streets, no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers. It is all for the purpose of protecting society, and civilizing ourselves. I will now put together a few sayings of Pagans and Unbelievers as an example of non-biblical morality: Truth is the pole-star of morality, by it alone can we steer. Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth ? Abhor 94 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR Dissimulation. To know the truth and fear to speak it : that is cowardice. One thing here is worth a good deal, to pass thy Hfe in truth and justice, with a be- nevolent disposition, even to liars and unjust men. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, for he makes himself bad. The practice of religion in- volves as a first principle a loving compassionate heart for all creatures. Religion means self-sacrifice. A loving heart is the great requirement: not to oppress, not to destroy, not to exalt oneself by treading down others ; but to comfort and befriend those in suffering. Like as a mother at tb-e risk of her life watches over her only child, so also let every one cultivate towards all beings a bounteous friendly mind. Man's great business is to improve his mind. What is it to you whether another is guilty or guiltless? Come, friend, atone for your own fault. Virtue consists in contempt for death. Why should we cling to this perishable body? In the eye of the wise the only thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow creatures. Treat others as you wish them to treat you. Do not return evil for evil. Our deeds, whether good or evil, follow us like shadows. Never will man attain full moral stature until woman is free. Cherish and reverence little children. Let the slave cease, and the master of slaves cease. To conquer your enemy by force increases his re- sentment. Conquer him by love and you will have no aftergrief. Victory breeds hatred. I look for no recompense — not even to be born in heaven — but seek the benefit of men, to bring back those who have gone astray, to enlighten those living THE BOOK OF BOOKS 95 in dismal error, to put away all sources of sorrow and pain in the world. I cannot have pleasure while another grieves and I have power to help him. ■Those who regard the Bible as the " Book of Books," and believe it to be invaluable and indispensable to the world, must have allowed their early associations or re- ligious sentiment to mislead them. Carlyle is more moral than Jeremiah; Ruskin is superior to Isaiah; Ingersoll, the Atheist, is a nobler moralist and a better man than Moses ; Plato and Marco Aurelius are wiser than Solo- mon; Sir Thomas More, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Matthew Arnold, and Emerson are worth more to us than all the Prophets. I hold a high opinion of the literary quality of some parts of the Old Testament; but I seriously think that the loss of the first fourteen books would be a distinct gain to the world. For the rest, there is considerable literary and some ethical value in Job (which is not Jewish), in Ecclesiastes (which is Pagan), in the Song of Solomon (which is an erotic love song), and in parts of Isaiah, Proverbs, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos. But I don't think any of these books equal to Henry George's Progress and Poverty, or William Morris' News from Nowhere, Of course, I am not blaming Moses and the Prophets: they could only tell us what they knew. The Ten Commandments have been effusively praised. There is nothing in those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the rack-renter, the jerry-builder, the slum land- lord, the usurer, the liar, the libertine, the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner, the religious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings, the fox- hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs 96 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR and cattle. There is nothing about *' cultivating towards all beings a bounteous friendly mind," nothing about lib- erty of speech and conscience, nothing about the wrong of causing pain, nor the virtue of causing happiness; nothing against anger or revenge, nor in favor of mercy and forgiveness. Of the Ten Commandments, seven are designed as defenses of the possessions and prerogatives of God and the property-owner. As a moral code the Commandments amount to very little. Moreover, the Bible teaches erroneous theories of his- tory, theology, and science. It relates childish stories of impossible miracles as facts. It presents a low idea of God. It gives an erroneous account of the relations between God and man. It fosters international hatred. It fosters religious pride and fanaticism. Its penal code is horrible. Its texts have been used for nearly two thousand years in defense of war, slavery, religious persecution, and the slaughter of " witches " and of " sorcerers." In a hundred wars the Christian soldiery have per- petrated massacre and outrage with the blood-bolstered phrases of the Bible on their lips. In a thousand trials the cruel witness of Moses has sent innocent women to a painful death. And always when an apology or a defense of the bar- barities of human slavery was needed it was sought for and found in the Holy Bible. Renan says: In all ancient Christian literature there is not one word that tells the slave to revolt, or that tells the master to liberate the slave, or even that touches the problem of public right which arises out of slavery. THE BOOK OF BOOKS 97 Mr. Remsburg, in his book, The Bible, shows that in America slavery was defended by the churches on the authority of the sacred Scriptures. He says: The Fugitive Slave law, which made us a nation of kidnapers, derived its authority from the New Testament. Paul had es- tablished a precedent by returning a fugitive slave t6 his master. Mr. Remsburg quotes freely from the sermons and speeches of Christian ministers to show the influence of the Bible in upholding slavery. Here are some of his many examples : The Rev. Alexander Campbell wrote : " There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not, then, we conclude, immoral." Said the Rev. Mr. Crawder, Methodist, of Virginia : " Slavery is not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated by the Bible, but it was positively instituted by God Himself." I shall quote no more on the subject of slavery. That inhuman institution was defended by the churches, and the appeal of the churches was to the Bible. As to witchcraft, the Rev. T. Rhondda Williams says that in one century a hundred thousand women were killed for witchcraft in Germany. Mr. Remsburg offers still more terrible evidence ; he says : One thousand were burned at Como in one year; eight hun- dred were burned at Wurzburg in one year ; five hundred perished at Geneva in three months; eighty were burned in a single village of Savoy ; nine women v/ere burned in a single fire at Leith; sixty were hanged in Suffolk; three thousand were legally executed during one session of Parliament, while thousands more were put to death by mobs; Remy, a Christian judge, executed eight hundred ; six hundred were burned by one bishop at Bam- burg ; Bogult burned six hundred at St. Cloud ; thousands were put to death by the Lutherans of Norway and Sweden ; Catholic Spain butchered thousands; Presbyterians were responsible for the death of four thousand in Scotland; fifty thousand were sentenced to death during the reign of Francis I ; seven thou- sand died at Treves ; the number killed in Paris in a few months is declared to have been " almost infinite." Dr. Sprenger places to total number of executions for witchcraft in Europe at nine millions. For centuries, witch fires burned in nearly every 98 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR town of Europe, and this Bible text, "Thou shalt not iuffer a witch to live," was the torch that kindled them. Count up the terrible losses in the many religious wars of the world, add in the massacres, the martyrdoms, the tortures for religion's sake ; put to the sum the long tale of witchcraft murders ; remember what slavery has been ; and then ask yourselves whether the Book of Books de- serves all the eulogy that has been laid upon it. I believe that to-day all manner of evil passions are fostered, and all the finer motions of the human spirit are retarded, by the habit of reading those savage old books of the Jews as the word of God. I do not think the Bible, in its present form, is a fit book to place in the hands of children, and it certainly is not a fit book to send out for the " salvation " of savage and ignorant people. OUR HEAVENLY FATHER The Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, in Shall We Understand the Bible, shows very clearly the gradual evolution of the idea of God amongst the Jews from a lower to a higher conception. Having dealt with the lower conception; let us now consider the higher. The highest conception of God is supposed to be the Christian conception of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being with supernal ten- derness and mercy — " God is Love." That is a very lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatal objection — it is not true. For this Heavenly Father, whose nature is Love, is also the All-knowing and All-powerful Creator of the world. Being All-powerful and All-knowing, He has power, and had always power, to create any kind of world He chose. Being a God of Love, He would not choose to create a world in which hate and pain should have a place. But there is evil in the world. There has been always evil in the world. Why did a good and loving God allow evil to enter the world? Being All-powerful and All- knowing, He could have excluded evil. Being good, He would hate evil. Being a God of Love, He would wish to exclude evil. Why, then, did He permit evil to enter ? The world is full of sorrow, of pain, of hatred and crime, and strife and war. All life is a perpetual deadly 99 100 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR struggle for existence. The law of nature is the law of prey. If God is a tender, loving, All-knowing and All-power- ful Heavenly Father, why did he build a world on cruel lines? Why does He permit evil and pain to continue? Why does He not give the world peace, and health, and happiness, and virtue? In the New Testament Christ compares Grod, as Heav- enly Father to Man, as an earthly father, representing God as more benevolent and tender : " How much more your Father which is in heaven ? " We may, then, on the authority of the Founder of Christianity, compare the Christian Heavenly Father with the human father. And in doing so we shall find that Christ was not justified in claiming that God is a better father to Man than Man is to his own children. We shall find that the poetical and pleasing theory of a Heavenly Father and God of Love is a delusion. " Who among you, if his child asks bread, will give him a stone ? " None amongst us. But in the great famines, as in India and Russia, God allows millions to die of starvation. These His children pray to Him for bread. He leaves them to die. Is it not so? God made the sunshine, sweet children, gracious women ; green hills, blue seas ; music, laughter, love, hu- mor ; the palm tree, the hawthorn buds, the " sweet-briar wind " ; the nightingale and the rose. But God made the earthquake, the volcano, the cy- clone; the shark, the viper, the tiger, the octopus, the poison berry ; and the deadly loathsome germs of cholera, consumption, typhoid, smallpox, and the black death. God has permitted famine, pestilence, and war. He has permitted martyrdom, witch-burning, slavery, massacre, torture, and human sacrifice. He has for millions of OUR HEAVENLY FATHER loi years looked down upon the ignorance, the misery, the crimes of men. He has been at once the author and the audience of the pitiful, unspeakable, long-drawn and far- stretched tragedy of earthly life. Is it not so ? . For thousands of years — perhaps for millions of years — the generations of men prayed to God for help, for comfort, for guidance. God was deaf, and dumb, and blind. Men of science strove to read the riddle of life; to guide and to succor their fellow creatures. The priests and followers of God persecuted and slew these men of science. God made no sign. Is it not so ? To-day men of science are trying to conquer the hor- rors of cancer and smallpox, and rabies and consumption. But not from Burning Bush, nor Holy Hill, nor by the mouth of priest or prophet does our Heavenly Father utter a word of counsel or encouragement. Millions of innocent dumb animals have been sub- jected to the horrible tortures of vivisection in the frantic endeavors of men to find a way of escape from the fell destroyers of the human race ; and God has allowed the piteous brutes to suffer anguish, when He could have saved them by revealing to Man the secret for which he so cruelly sought. Is it not so? " Nature is red in beak and claw." On land and in sea the animal creation chase and maim, and slay and devour each other. The beautiful swallow on the wing devours the equally beautiful gnat. The graceful flying- fish, like a fair white bird, goes glancing above the blue magnificence of the tropical seas. His flight is one of terror; he is pursued by the ravenous dolphin. The ichneumon-fly lays its eggs under the skin of the cater- pillar. The eggs are hatched by the warmth of the caterpillar's blood. They produce a brood of larvae 102 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR which devour the caterpillar alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush creeping things; there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts sud- denly into eruption, and a beautiful city is a heap of ruins, and its inhabitants are charred or mangled corpses. And the Heavenly Father, who is Love, has power to save, and makes no sign. Is it not so? Blindness, epilepsy, leprosy, madness, fall like a dread- ful blight upon a myriad of God's children, and the Heavenly Father gives neither guidance nor consolation. Only man helps man. Only man pities; only man tries to save. Millions of harmless women have been burned as witches. God, our Heavenly Father, has power to save them. He allows them to suffer and die. God knew that those women were being tortured and burnt on a false charge. He knew that the infamous murders were in His name. He knew that the whole fabric of crime was due to the human reading of His " revelation " to man. He could have saved the women ; He could have enlightened their persecutors ; He could have blown away the terror, the cruelty, and the igno- rance of His priests and worshipers with a breath. And He was silent. He allowed the armies of poor women to be tortured and murdered in His name. Is it not so? Will you, then, compare the Heavenly Father with a father among men? Is there any earthly father who would allow his children to suffer as God allows Man to OUR HEAVENLY FATHER 103 suffer? If a man had knowledge and power to prevent or to abolish war and ignorance and hunger and disease ; if a man had the knowledge and the power to abolish human error and human suffering and human wrong and did not do it, we should call him an inhuman mon- ster, a cruel fiend. Is it not so ? But God has knowledge and power, and we are asked to regard Him as a Heavenly Father, and a God of in- finite wisdom, and infinite mercy, and infinite love. The Christians used to tell us, and some still tell us, that this Heavenly Father of infinite love and mercy would doom the creatures He had made to Hell — for their sins. That, having created us imperfect, He would punish our imperfections with everlasting torture in a lake of everlasting fire. They used to tell us that this good God allowed a Devil to come on earth and tempt man to his ruin. They used to say this Devil would win more souls than Christ could win: that there should be " more goats than sheep." To escape from these horrible theories, the Christians (some of them) have thrown over the doctrines of Hell and the Devil. But without a Devil how can we maintain a belief in a God of love and kindness ? With a good God, and a bad God (or Devil), one might get along; for then the good might be ascribed to God, and the evil to the Devil. And that is what the old Persians did in their doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahrimann. But with no Devil the belief in a merciful and loving Heavenly Father becomes im- possible. If God blesses, who curses? If God saves, who damns? If God helps, who harms? This belief in a " Heavenly Father," like the belief in the perfection of the Bible, drives its votaries into weird 104 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR and wonderful positions. For example, a Christian wrote to me about an animal called the aye-aye. He said: There is a little animal called an aye-aye. This animal has two hands. Each hand has five fingers. The peculiar thing about these hands is that the middle finger is elongated a great deal — it is about twice as long as the others. This is to enable it to scoop a special sort of insect out of special cracks in the special trees it frequents. Now, how did the finger begin to elongate? A little lengthening would be absolutely no good, as the cracks in the trees are 2 inches or 3 inches deep. It must have varied from the ordinary length to one twice as long at once. There is no other way. Where does natural selection come in? In this, as in scores of other instances, is shown the infinite goodness of God." Now, how does the creation of this long finger show the " infinite goodness of God." The infinite goodness of God to whom? To the animal whose special finger enables him to catch the insect? Then what about the insect? Where does he come in? Does not the long finger of the animal show the infinite badness of God to the insect? What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the cholera microbe to feed on man? What of the infinite goodness of God in teaching the grub of the ichneumon- fly to eat up the cabbage caterpillar alive? I see no infinite goodness here, but only the infinite foolishness of sentimental superstition. If a man fell into the sea, and saw a shark coming, I cannot fancy him praising the infinite goodness of God in giving the shark so large a mouth. The greyhound's speed is a great boon to the greyhound ; but it is no boon to the hare. But this theory of a merciful and loving Heavenly Father is vital to the Christian religion. Destroy the idea of the Heavenly Father, who is Love, and Christianity is a heap of ruins. For there is no OUR HEAVENLY FATHER 105 longer a benevolent God to build our hopes upon; and Jesus Christ, whose glory is a newer revelation of God, has not revealed Him truly, as He is, but only as Man fain would believe Him to be. .And I claim that this Heavenly Father is a myth : that in face of a knowledge of Hfe and the world, we cannot reasonably believe in Him. There is no Heavenly Father watching tenderly over us, His children. He is the baseless shadow of a wistful human dream. PRAYER AND PRAISE As to prayer and praise. Christians believe that God is just, that He is all-wise and all-knowing. If God is just, will He not do justice without being en- treated of men? If God is all-wise, and knows all that happens, will He not know what is for man's good better than man can tell Him? If He knows better than Man knows what is best for Man, and if He is a just God and a loving Father, will He not do right without any advice or reminder from Man? If He is a just God, will He give us less than justice unless we pray to Him ; or will He give us more than justice because we importune Him? To ask God for His love, or for His grace, or for any worldly benefit seems to me unreasonable. If God knows we need His grace, or if He knows we need some help or benefit, He will give it to us if we deserve it. If we do not deserve it, or do not need what we ask for, it would not be just nor wise of Him to grant our prayer. To pray to God is to insult Him. What would a man think if his children knelt and begged for his love or for their daily bread? He would think his children showed a very low conception of their father's sense of duty and affection. Then Christians think God answers prayer. How can they think that? In the many massacres, and famines, and pestilences io6 PRAYER AND PRAISE 107 has God answered prayer ? As we learn more and more of the laws of nature we put less and less reliance on the effect of prayer. When fever broke out, men used to run to the priest; now they run to the doctor. In old times when plague struck a city, the priests marched through the streets bearing the Host, and the people knelt to pray ; now the authorities serve out soap and medicine and look sharply to the drains. And yet there still remains a superstitious belief in prayer, and most surprising are some of its manifesta- tions. For instance, I went recently to see Wilson Barrett in The Silver King. Wilfrid Denver, a drunken gambler, follows a rival to kill him. He does not kill him, but he thinks he has killed him. He flies from justice. Now, this man Denver leaves London by a fast train for Liverpool. Between London and Rugby he jumps out of the train, and, after limping many miles, goes to an inn, orders dinner and a private room, and asks for the evening paper. While he waits for the paper he kneels down and prays to God, for the sake of wife and children, to allow him to escape. And, directly after, in comes a girl with the paper, and Denver reads how the train he rode in caught fire, and how all the passengers in the first three coaches were burnt to cinders. Down goes Denver on his knees, and thanks God for listening to his prayer. And not a soul in the audience laughed. God, to allow a murderer to escape from the law, has burnt to death a lot of innocent passengers, and Wilfrid Denver is piously grateful. And nobody laughed! io8 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR But Christians tell us they know that prayer is effica- cious. And to them it may be so in some measure. Per- haps, if a man pray for strength to resist temptation, or for guidance in time of perplexity, and if he have faith, his prayer shall avail him something. Why? Not because God v^ill hear, or answer, but for two natural reasons. First, the act of prayer is emotional, and so calms the man who prays, for much of his excitement is worked off. It is so when a sick man groans : it eases his pain. It is so when a woman weeps: it relieves her over- charged heart. Secondly, the act of prayer gives courage or confidence, in proportion to the faith of him that prays. If a man has to cross a deep ravine by a narrow plank, and if his heart fail him, and he prays for God's help, believing that he will get it, he will walk his plank with more con- fidence. If he prays for help against a temptation, he is really appealing to his own better nature ; he is rousing up his dormant faculty of resistance and desire for righteousness, and so rises from his knees in a sweeter and calmer frame of mind. For myself, I never pray, and never feel the need of prayer. And though I admit, as above, that it may have some present advantage, yet I am inclined to think that it is bought too dearly at the price of a decrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to be always asking for help, for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me that such a habit must tend to weaken char- acter. " He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small." It is better to work for the general good, to help our weak or friendless fellow-creatures, than to pray PRAYER AND PRAISE 109 for our own grace, or benefit, or pardon. Work is nobler than prayer, and far more dignified. And as to praise. I cannot imagine the Creator of the Universe wanting men's praise. Does a wise man prize the praise of fools ? Does a strong man value the praise of the weak? Does any man of wisdom and power care for the applause of his inferiors? We make God into a puny man, a man full of vanity and *' love of approbation," when we confer on Him the impertinence of our prayers and our adoration. While there is so much grief and misery and unmerited and avoidable suffering in the world, it is pitiful to see the Christian millions squander such a wealth of time and energy and money on praise and prayer. If you were a human father, would you rather your children praised you and neglected each other, or that brother should stand by brother and sister cherish sister? Then " how much more your Father which is in Heaven?" Twelve millions of our British people on the brink of starvation ! In Christian England hundreds of thousands of thieves, knaves, idlers, drunkards, cowards, and har- lots; and fortunes spent on churches and the praise of God. If the Bible had not habituated us to the idea of a barbarous God who was always ravenous for praise and sacrifice, we could not tolerate the mockery of " Divine Service " by well-fed and respectable Christians in the midst of untaught ignorance, unchecked roguery, un- bridled vice, and the degradation and defilement and ruin of weak women and little children. Seven thousand pounds to repair a chapel to the praise and glory of God, and under its very walls you may buy a woman's soul for a few pieces of silver. no GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR I cannot imagine a God who would countenance such a reHgion. I cannot understand why Christians are not ashamed of it. To me the national affectation of piety and holiness resembles a white shirt put on over a dirty skin. THE NEW TESTAMENT THE RESURRECTION Value of the Evidence in Law Christianity as a religion must, I am told, stand or fall with the claims that Christ was divine, and that He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. Archdeacon Wilson, in a sermon at Rochdale, described the divinity and Resurrection of Christ as " the central doctrines of Christianity." The question we have to consider here is the question of whether these central doctrines are true. Christians are fond of saying that the Resurrection is one of the best attested facts in history. I hold that the evidence for the Resurrection would not be listened to in a court of law, and is quite inadmissible in a court of cool and impartial reason. First of all, then, what is the fact which this evidence is supposed to prove ? The fact alleged is a most marvel- ous miracle, and one upon which a religion professed by some hundreds of millions of human beings is founded. The fact alleged is that nearly two thousand years ago God came into the world as a man, that He was known as Jesus of Nazareth, that He was crucified, died upon the cross, was laid in a tomb, and on the third day came to life again, left His tomb, and subsequently ascended into Heaven. The fact alleged, then, is miraculous and important, and the evidence in proof of such a fact should be over- whelmingly strong. We should demand stronger evidence in support of a J13 114 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR thing alleged to have happened a thousand years ago than we should demand in support of a fact alleged to have happened yesterday. The Resurrection is alleged to have happened eighteen centuries ago. We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact which was outside human experience than we should demand in support of a fact common to human experience. The incarnation of a God in human form, the resurrec- tion of a man or a God from the dead, are facts outside human experience. We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact when the establishment of that fact was of great importance to millions of men and women, than we should demand when the truth or falsity of the al- leged fact mattered very little to anybody. The alleged fact of the Resurrection is of immense im- portance to hundreds of millions of people. We should demand stronger evidence in support of an alleged fact when many persons were known to have strong political, sentimental, or mercenary motives for proving the fact alleged, than we should demand when no serious interest would be affected by a decision for or against the fact alleged. There are millions of men and women known to have strong motives — sentimental, political, or mercenary — for proving the verity of the Resurrection. On all these counts we are justified in demanding the strongest of evidence for the alleged fact of Christ's resurrection from the dead. The more abnormal or unusual the occurrence, the weightier should be the evidence of Its truth. If a man told a mixed company that Captain Webb THE RESURRECTION 115 swam the English Channel, he would have a good chance of belief. The incident happened but a few years ago, it was re- ported in all the newspapers of the day. It is not in it- self an impossible thing for a man to do. But if the same man told the same audience that five hundred years ago an Irish sailor had swum from Holy- head to New York, his statement would be received with less confidence. Because five centuries is a long time, there is no credi- ble record of the feat, and we cannot believe any man capable of swimming about four thousand miles. Let us look once more at the statement made by the believers in the Resurrection. We are asked to believe that the all-powerful external God, the God who created twenty millions of suns, came down to earth, was born of a woman, was crucified, was dead, was laid in a tomb for three days, and then came to life again, and ascended into Heaven. What is the nature of the evidence produced in sup- port of this tremendous miracle? Is there any man or woman alive who has seen God? No. Is there any man or woman alive who has seen Christ? No. There is no human being alive who can say that God exists or that Christ exists. The most they can say is that they believe that God and Christ exist. No historian claims that any God has been seen on earth for nearly nineteen centuries. The Christians deny the assertions of all other re- ligions as to divine visits ; and all the other religions deny their assertions about God and Christ. There is no reason why God should have come down to earth, to be born of a woman, and die on the cross. Ii6 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR He could have convinced and won over mankind with- out any such act. He has not convinced nor won over mankind by that act. Not one-third of mankind are professing Christians to-day, and of those not one in ten is a true Christian and a true believer. The Resurrection, therefore, seems to have been un- reasonable, unnecessary, and futile. It is also contrary to science and to human experience. '■ What is the nature of the evidence? The common idea of the man in the street is the idea that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were contemporaries of Christ; and that the Gospels were written and circulated during the lives of the authors. There is no evidence to support these beliefs. There is no evidence, outside the New Testament, that any of the Apostles ever existed. We know nothing about Paul, Peter, John, Mark, Luke, or Matthew, except what is told in the New Testament. Outside the Testament there is not a word of histor- ical evidence of the divinity of Christ, of the virgin birth, of the Resurrection or Ascension. Therefore it is obvious that, before we can be expected to believe the tremendous story of the Resurrection, we must be shown overwhelming evidence of the authen- ticity of the Scriptures. Before you can prove your miracle you have to prove your book. Suppose the case to come before a judge. Let us try to imagine what would happen : Counsel: M'lud, may it please your ludship. It is stated by Paul of Tarsus that he and others worked miracles — The Judge: Do you intend to call Paul of Tarsus? Counsel: No, m'lud. He is dead. Judge: Did he make a proper sworn deposition? THE RESURRECTION 117 Counsel: No, m'lud. But some of his letters are extant, and I propose to put them in. Judge: Are these letters affidavits? Are they witnessed and attested ? Counsel: No, m'lud. Judge: Are they signed? ^ Counsel: No, m'lud. Judge: Are they in the handwriting of this Paul of Tarsus? Counsel: No, m'lud. They are copies; the originals are lost. Judge: Who was Paul of Tarsus? Counsel: M'lud, he was the apostle to the Gentiles. Judge: You intend to call some of these Gentiles? Counsel: No, m'lud. There are none living. Judge : But you don't mean to say — how long has this shadowy witness, Paul of Tarsus, been dead? Counsel: Not two thousand years, m'lud. Judge: Thousand years dead? Can you bring evidence to prove that he was ever alive? Counsel: Circumstantial, m'lud. Judge: I cannot allow you to read the alleged statements of a hypothetical witness who is acknowledged to have been dead for nearly two thousand years. I cannot admit the alleged letters of Paul as evidence. Counsel: I shall show that the act of resurrection was wit- nessed by one Mary Magdalene, by a Roman soldier — Judge: What is the soldier's name? Counsel: I don't know, m'lud. Judge: Call him. Counsel: He is dead, m'lud. Judge: Deposition? Counsel: No, m'lud. Judge : Strike out his evidence. Call Mary Magdalene. Counsel: She is dead, m'lud. But I shall show that she told the disciples — Judge: What she told the disciples is not evidence. Counsel : Well, m'lud, I shall give the statements of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew states very plainly that — Judge: Of course, you intend to call Matthew? Counsel: No, m'lud. He is — he is dead. Judge : It seems to me that to prove this resurrection you will have to perform a great many more. Are Mark and John dead, also? Counsel: Yes, m'lud. Judge: Who were they? Counsel : I — I don't know, m'lud. Judge: These statements of theirs, to which you allude; are they in their own handwriting? Counsel : May it please you ludship, they did not write them. The statements are not given as their own statements, but only as statements "according to them." The statements are really ii8 GOD AND MY NEIGHBOR copies of translations of copies of translations of statements sup- posed to be based upon what someone told Matthew, and — Judge: Who copied and translated, and re-copied and re- translated, this hearsay evidence? Counsel: I do not know, m'lud. Judge : Were the copies seen and revised by the authors ? Di